


The Queen of All My Dreams

by Reb_Yell



Series: How Everything Still Turns to Gold [2]
Category: Chicago Fire
Genre: F/M, Not Dawson friendly, Otis will never die in my world, season 8 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:48:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 58,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23540344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reb_Yell/pseuds/Reb_Yell
Summary: Sequel to "What Was and What Should Be", so this picks up pretty much right after that, you might want to start there.If they got together because two negatives make a positive, it only makes sense, she thinks, that together they can just keep making negatives into positives. Even if making an electron into a proton totally violates scientific laws. It works for them. Sometimes, they just have to take things nuclear to do it. Or something like that. Which is probably why Matt failed Chemistry in high school. He makes impossible things seem possible. At least to her.
Relationships: Matthew Casey & Kelly Severide, Sylvie Brett/Matthew Casey
Series: How Everything Still Turns to Gold [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1699705
Comments: 124
Kudos: 236





	1. Demo Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Constructive criticism welcome as I continue moving forward. Trolls just wanting to be argumentative or offensive will be deleted. Completely misconstruing my writing is being a troll. If you don't like it, there's a back button. If you really don't like it...why are you reading a sequel, 80,000+ words later? Stop torturing yourself. Go find a story that you like.

Demo day at the new house was basically a House 51 party, about a week after Matt closed on it. Everyone pitched in, and they had the place stripped really bare by 5 o’clock that night. It was February, and miserably cold outside, but at least there was no snow or ice. The dumpster Matt had hired was full, and ready to be taken away the next day. Matt bought pizza and had it delivered to Molly’s, where he also bought the first round of beers. Everyone was sweaty, dirty, and tired, but also in great spirits.

Now, she and Matt could start really deciding what they wanted to do with the house. She was pretty sure they’d do the interior stuff all first, then work on the outside stuff. Except the windows. Matt wanted to get those replaced and in some cases moved before they did much inside to the first and second floors. A couple days after demo, he laid out plans on the table at the loft, so they could plan what they wanted to do.

“I was thinking we’d do the ground floor apartment first.”  
“But that’s the guest space.” Sylvie wrinkled her nose. It didn’t make sense to her to start with the space they’d use the least. Matt shrugged.

“If I finish that up, I could move in there, work upstairs.”  
“Hey, man, I told you – no rush.” Kelly walked behind, heading for the sofa to watch the hockey match.

“I know, but it’s also the part I can work on while the windows are being reconfigured upstairs.”  
“You’re not doing that work yourself?”  
“Faster to hire a crew.” Matt shook his head. “And February is the driest month in Chicago, so I want to get on that now. It’s cold as hell, but since we’re not living in the place, I figure better to take advantage of the dry weather if we’re opening exterior walls.”

“That makes sense.” Sylvie nodded along.

“If we want to move walls, I’ll need to get an engineer to sign off on the plans, so that’s our first decision. Most of the stuff I can do myself, but substantial floor-plan changes, and the decks on the back, those are going to require an engineer’s approval to get city permits. Plumbing, HVAC, and wiring all need inspections, too, but I can schedule those later – just deal with the basement stuff first.”

“This is a huge project, Matt. Are you sure you can afford to do all this?” Sylvie asked, and he shot her an aggravated look. “What? It’s a legitimate question.”  
“I told you to let me worry about the money. So let me worry about the money.”  
“Well, I don’t like that rule. If it’s our project, then it should be our worry about the money.”  
“I don’t think you can afford a fifty-percent buy-in.” Matt pointed out a little sharply.

“No, I can’t, but I don’t want you to think you have to…try to do too much.” She tried to soften her words, and her tone, because she could see he was getting offended. “Matt, you’re a contractor. You’re going to be working on this house every winter for the next however many years you live there. You’re going to be constantly finding projects. I know you. We don’t have to do _everything_ right now. And I’m going to worry about money because I don’t want you working a bunch of over-time to spend more on this house – I’d rather do the projects a bit piecemeal and have you home with me. Okay?”  
“Sylvie, I appreciate that.” He softened as well. He leaned over to kiss her gently. “I’m just saying, don’t worry about it.”  
“I don’t like you just saying it’s _your_ job to worry about money. I don’t want you to ‘take care of me’ like that.” She had visions of being told he wanted her to stay home or something, not work once they had kids, which maybe she’d decide that for herself once they had kids, if they had kids, she was sort of getting ahead of things there, but she didn’t want to be dictated to or told she didn’t ‘need’ to work as if she only worked for the money or as a hobby for lack of anything ‘better’ to do, or like it was some slight on his manhood that she worked.

“I had good equity in the condo, because of the place I had before that. So I had a pretty big down payment.” Matt paused. “I promise, I will tell you when we hit the budget, okay?”  
“You’ll seriously tell me if we start dreaming too big?”  
“I will seriously tell you. Just remember that we’ll take longer to do this, because I’ll be doing a lot of the work – but that means less labor costs, too. And no contractor fees.”

“Fine, I trust you.” She gave in, mostly graciously. She looked at the plans he had laid out. She didn’t see any real need to change the layout of the home. It was pretty open on the ground floor for a late Victorian house, and she didn’t want to give up any bedrooms upstairs, even if they were smallish. “I think the only walls are the ones blocking the stairs to the ground floor, we wanted to take those out, right?”  
“Yeah, but we don’t need an engineer to sign off on that – we’re just taking out some drywall basically. You don’t want to change anything else?”  
“No, I like the layout.” She shook her head.

“Okay. Well, let’s decide big stuff first then. You like the idea of doing the ground floor first?”  
“It makes sense.” She nodded.

“Great. So now, we need to pick the windows we want, and start on things like flooring and cabinets for the ground floor.” Matt smiled at her. “Usually, this is where the guy I’m talking to turns it over to the woman in his life.”  
“Nuh-uh. We are making these decisions together. I may be the fixer-upper guru, but it’s your house, Matt.”

They spent a good two hours that night talking about the windows they wanted, and what sort of deck they wanted on the back. Matt really hated the deck off the master, with stairs down to the lower levels, which he said blocked light to the first floor and was unnecessary. She pointed out fire egress, but he’d just shot her a dirty look. She wasn’t really going to fight him on it. She thought the three-story patio/deck dominated the back of the home too. He sketched out their ideas, and they narrowed it down to what they wanted to talk through with the engineer. They also talked plumbing changes, which really shouldn’t have been sexy, but she ended up in Matt’s lap as they looked at bathroom options which was inherently distracting. Plus, there was something incredibly sexy about Matt in contractor mode. Was it early in their relationship to be renovating a house together? Absolutely. They’d been dating for four months. They weren’t engaged. He hadn’t asked her to move in with him. But here he was building, or rebuilding anyway, a home and she had a distinct feeling (backed up by the looks from pretty much everyone at 51, and especially tonight from Kelly and Stella) that it was for _them_. Did she care that they’d only been dating four months? Not at all. And the longer she sat in his lap, the more she got distracted by the heat and the smell and the Matt-Casey of him. She wiggled a little, so she could whisper in his ear.

“Why don’t we call it a night?”  
“It’s nine o’clock.” Matt seemed confused for a second. She wiggled again, a little more obviously this time. She took his hand, removed the pencil from his grip, and moved it to her stomach. She didn’t want to be too blatant, not with Stella and Kelly on the sofa, watching the Blackhawks. Luckily, Matt was a pretty clever man. He was not, however, a very subtle man.

“Sev, you mind if I leave this stuff spread out?” He called without even turning around.

“Nah, man, we’re good.” Kelly replied, though there was a definite hint of laughter in his voice. She was mostly over the shyness about Kelly and Stella knowing what they were doing. Everyone knew they were having sex, in general, and it was a little weird to have friends know you were having sex right now, but she wasn’t uncomfortable enough with it to not have sex with Matt. If he was in the mood, which he’d rarely been since that awful email, she was not about to be shy about his roommates being home.

She managed to keep her hands to herself until they were in Matt’s bedroom. Then she kissed him, hard and fast and deep, because she could and she wanted it, she wanted him. She wanted to get lost in him, the strength and solidness and firmness and just the masculinity of him, it all turned her on incredibly, right now. She pulled at his shirt, feeling desperate to get at bare skin. Together, they stripped each other quickly, and dropped onto his bed. She loved the feel of him over her, something about the size differential between them made her insanely hot, that sense that if he wanted to, he could take her, that he could control her, it felt sexy and amazing, but safe, not at all dangerous. She loved the way he could hold her down, make her submit to him, in the most delicious ways, like now with her arms above her head and his mouth on her tits, and his body pinning her down so all she could really do is writhe a bit underneath his attentions, that and let him tease and please her. He pulled back after a few minutes.

“Can I?” He always asked, even months after she’d given him his ‘birthday present’. She nodded, and he dropped back down to run his mouth so slowly from her tits to her pussy. He released her hands as he moved down, but she left them over her head, not wanting to move and disrupt even the slightest bit of the feeling just yet. Everything he did to her always felt so good. She was mostly over her aversion to having his mouth down there, because he so clearly did _not_ think it was awful or tasted weird or smelled bad, and once she let herself go, it felt fantastic. She tugged on his hair with her left hand though, and he looked up at her with a nod.

“I know, same rules.”  
“Thank you.” She knew he was a little disappointed that she still said surface-level only but the idea of his tongue inside her just weirded her out.  
“Don’t thank me _yet_.” He grinned, and dove into his task. Either the men she’d been with before had really sucked at this, or Matt was magical, because that thing, whatever it was, that he did with his tongue and her clit and the sucking and the teeth and the everything, it sent her skyward so quickly. It might be embarrassing, how quickly she came, except that he took great pride in it, and his ability to make her keep coming multiple times. After the second orgasm, though, she tugged at his hair again. She didn’t want him to wear her out like this, she had other plans.

“Fuck me, Matt. I want you inside me.”  
“Grab a condom.” He directed her with a smile as he slid back up her body. She shook her head, and kissed him. She concentrated for what felt like a long time just on kissing him, lips and teeth and tongues and hands roving freely over each other’s bodies. Her right hand eventually made it to his dick, tugging at the solid thickness of him several times. He pulled back, arching into her touch. Every stroke, she let her thumb run long the bottom, rubbing a little more forcefully at the little bit of flesh where his foreskin was connected to the head of his dick. She swore it was the single most sensitive spot on his body. It always made him arch like that, and curse under his breath in the best ways. She leaned up to him, kissing along his jaw until she got to his ear.  
“No condom.”  
“Syl-“  
“Birth control, Matt.” She assured him. “I’m on it, it’s had plenty of time to be at full effect, and I want to feel you fuck me, just you, no condom.”

“You sure?”  
“We’re both clean. I’m sure.” She nodded with a smile. “Just you and me, nothing between us.”  
“Fuck me.” He groaned, but then he slid two fingers up in her, soon a third, rubbing along the front of her pussy that way that made her so wet, but opened her up for him, and then a fourth finger, and his mouth was all over her, from her tits to her neck, to her mouth where they battled for dominance, and then back to her tits, and when his thumb hit her clit as well she exploded into a third orgasm for the night. She had never thought she came particularly easily, but he must’ve gotten a cheat code somewhere, because she sure as fuck did with Matt.

“Please, Matt. Be in me. Please. Inside me.” She managed almost coherent English. His fingers eased her down from the wave just a little, then she felt him line up and start to push home. She couldn’t help the tiny flinch at the twinge. No matter how much he brought her off, it always took her body a little bit, just a moment, to adjust to the size of him as he pushed deeper into her. He felt hotter, smoother, and somehow just a little bit bigger without the condom, which made no sense but she didn’t care because the feeling mattered not the sense. He was inside her, just him, no barrier, and just the emotions and thoughts tied up with that had her flying headlong towards another orgasm. She moved against him, impatient for that feeling, but he grabbed her hips firmly.

“Shit, Sylvie, give me a minute.”  
“Fuck me, Matt. Please, fuck me.”  
“I’m gonna come too quick if you don’t…you’re so tight, so hot and wet and fuck, it feels so fucking good, Sylvie. Need a minute.”  
“I’m so close again, I don’t care, just fuck me.” He obliged after a moment, his strokes angled perfectly, but not too hard or even that fast, at least, not tonight, and she shifted the slightest bit, and he was hitting that spot dead on, and a few seconds later she flew apart. Once she could manage any sort of conscious bodily action, she forced her eyes open as he followed her over that cliff. She could feel his cock jerking a little inside her. He kept moving, slowly, gently, for a few minutes, easing them both down from their highs. Eventually, he pulled out, and settled into the bed next to her.

“That was…a pleasant surprise.” He managed, slightly out of breath.

“No distance between us, right?” She replied. “And you feel even better without a condom, which just…I didn’t even know there was a better.”  
“You, Sylvie Brett, are dangerously good for my ego.”  
“It’s well-earned.” She rolled to kiss him gently. “I need to go clean up a little. Then sleep, seems like we’ve got a long day tomorrow.”


	2. A Quiet Month

Matt was able to get work started on the house quickly. The window openings were moved, which included replacing bricks, and all the new windows were in place in just a few days. The modern awning over the front door was also removed. The clearly modern front fencing looked kind of out of place now, with the new design of the exterior making the house look its age again. She was glad Matt had already said he wanted to change the fencing. That would come later, though. She’d always liked the renovation shows, but now she was getting to live one out and there were a _lot_ of decisions to make, really. She just felt bad that she was picking up overtime shifts so Matt was doing a lot of the work by himself. She could only be so helpful anyway, but at least she could be there with him, if she wasn’t covering for what seemed like half the paramedics in Chicago ending up sick this flu season. At least work had been quiet, and there had been no major drama, nothing even about his case against former-Chief Gayan and her husband (at least, not that he’d told her about, but if it was major, he’d tell her). Cruz’s wedding was approaching and that was all the ‘drama’ they needed for a while.

She hadn’t yet told her parents that Matt had bought a house, or that they were renovating it together. Her parents were still not over the fake-Facebook incident, and Sylvie hadn’t told them about the email. She quietly made it clear she was still dating Matt, of course, but if they needed more time to adjust, well, she didn’t have much choice but to give it to them. Besides, they were so busy in Chicago, there wasn’t much time to worry about things she couldn’t really change, and Mom and Dad wouldn’t need to talk to Matt directly for a while. They wouldn’t visit Chicago until next month for Sylvie’s birthday. In mid-February, Matt got a new guy on truck, not a candidate but he was new to a truck, and so he had a lot to learn about a truckie’s duties at a fire scene. Matt seemed to like Gallo well enough, certainly he was enthusiastic enough, and he’d hit it off with Ritter, which was great. It just meant Matt was planning more drills again – he’d had his crew like a well-oiled machine but now it was one that had moving parts added in, so he was reworking his formula. That meant little downtime at work for February, so all the renovation decisions had to be made outside of shift, plus all the work he was doing and meeting with electricians and plumbers and stuff. They’d had a very nice date on Valentine’s Day (and great sex after, of course) but she missed him. She’d agreed to meet him at Molly’s, once she got off a half-shift of overtime and he finished up working on the house.

“Hey, where’s Casey?” Herrmann asked as he brought her a glass of wine.

“Finishing up at the house for the day.”  
“Yeah? How’s that coming?”  
“I haven’t seen it for a few days, but it’s great so far. He finished the flooring downstairs last week, has the cabinets in, I think he did the countertops today and tiled the shower.”  
“Sounds like it’s gonna be livable soon.”  
“Just the downstairs.” Sylvie laughed. “He has big plans for the upstairs, but the guest suite downstairs is just about ready for my decorating ideas.”  
“Yeah? He letting you pick everything?”  
“Pretty much. He makes the decisions on things like heating – he put in this radiant floor heating that is going to be amazing in a basement in the winter – and the windows, the new doors, but decorating is my thing.”  
“You two gonna be moving in together when its done?” Herrmann asked. Subtlety was never his strongest suit either. Sylvie smiled gently at him.   
“He hasn’t asked me yet.” She admitted. “But I’d say ‘yes’ if he did. You know something?”  
“Nope. Just thinking, it’s good seeing you both so happy. And I ain’t gonna lie, you both deserve it, you know?”

“Well, thank you.” She toasted him with her wine.

“And now, I think your date is here – hey, Captain, you want a beer?”  
“Yeah, thanks Herrmann.” Matt came to a stop next to her, and she tilted her head up to accept a short kiss from him.

“Everything okay at the house?” She asked. He looked tired.

“Yeah, got a lot done. You need to start picking out furniture for the downstairs.”  
“Okay, we’ll talk budget tomorrow and I’ll get some stuff together, we can pick it out together.”  
  


She was grateful that February had been a quiet month. They had enough hangover drama from January, they didn’t need anything new. Just nice typical calls, nothing strange or suspicious or even all that difficult. No one got hurt, beyond the usual small strains or sprains. Mouch and Otis, especially, were stepping up to train Gallo and help bring him along. Matt had in his typical low-key Matt way been really proud of Mouch mentoring Gallo, and Ritter for that matter. Matt had been pleased and proud of Kidd’s increasing involvement with training schemes, and her trying to set up recruitment of more female firefighters. He seemed really happy to be back at 51. Everyone did their best to make 51 feel as normal as possible. Sylvie (and probably a lot of the others) tried not to notice, or at least not to make too big a deal out of some of Matt’s newer quirks. He showered at the house, no problem, there was nothing like that he seemed nervous about, but more just that he was…he’d always been private, but now he was almost distant from everyone at times, sometimes he was in the common room joking and watching the game, whatever, just like he’d always been in the breaks between his paperwork as Captain, and other times it was like he just couldn’t stand to be around people. His relationship with Chief was awkward. He’d practically run away from Donna when she stopped by the house. He barely managed a hello and eye contact with Cindy, let alone the hug it was clear she had expected when she stopped by 51. He’d seemed okay the first couple weeks, but he wasn’t getting better, he was getting worse. Matt was comfortable with her, at least. He was alright with Kelly, and only a little distant with Stella (who he knew for a fact had never even seen the pictures), so home wasn’t awkward thank God. Even with random strangers he was different, shy in a way he’d never been – he was not the most gregarious man naturally, often letting Kelly talk for him if they were out together – and she was worried about him. They needed some quiet time, some recovery time. So March could stay quiet, too, just let them plan the house and get through normal shifts.

She spent about half her nights at the loft with Matt, and if you added in the time on-shift, she was barely spending 1 in 4 nights at her own apartment. Still, on some nights, it was a lot more convenient. She’d been out doing wedding shopping all day with Chloe and Lily and Chloe’s mom, who was in town for the week. They’d come back to the apartment still working out some of what Chloe wanted and how to get it done.

“Sylvie, I need to ask you something.” Chloe said it so carefully it made Sylvie immediately wary. This was not going to be an easy question, that was certain.

“Of course.”  
“Joe was picking his groomsmen. You know, it’s just a tux rental so he wasn’t in as big a hurry to ask them as I was to get dresses for you guys as bridesmaids. He wants to, but I’m not sure whether…we debated asking Matt at all.” Chloe looked apologetic for bringing it up, but like it was an unpleasant necessity.

“Matt?” Chloe’s mom asked, clearly not recognizing the name.

“Sylvie’s boyfriend.” Chloe explained. “He’s also Joe’s boss.”  
“I thought the cute one, Severide, that was Joe’s boss.”  
“I happen to think Matt is the ‘cute’ one.” Sylvie smiled to take any sting out of her retort.   
“Severide is his lieutenant on Squad. Matt is his captain, and used to be his boss when he was on Truck.” Chloe explained further for her mom. She turned to Sylvie, “I didn’t want to ask him, Joe does.”  
“You don’t want Matt as a groomsman?” That hurt. Chloe had always seemed to like Matt. She couldn’t think what he might’ve done to be excluded. The times Matt had talked to Chloe, he’d always been his typical sweet welcoming charming self. Sylvie knew Matt really liked Chloe, thought she was great for Joe.

“Well, honey, if you don’t want him involved, I think you should have veto power.” Chloe’s mom made it sound so simple.   
“He doesn’t expect to be asked, if you’re worried about offending him.” Sylvie tried to shake off her own hurt feelings, like she’d been rejected as much as Matt had been. She kept her tone as neutral as she could. “Matt never _expects_ to be picked for much of anything. But if he’s not welcome at all-“  
“No, that’s not it.” Chloe rushed out, cutting her off. “I like Matt, and _of course_ we want him at the wedding, it’s not that at all. He’s a great guy. I just, I noticed he’s been, since that email and everything, he’s really withdrawn and you guys don’t come out much, even when you do, he’s…nice of course, but really sort of shy. I understand it, of course, but Joe wants to ask him because he says it’s important to treat Matt normally and I think if Joe asks, Matt will definitely say yes even if he’d rather not because of everything.”  
“What is this email and everything?” Chloe’s mom was now completely confused, that was obvious.

“Someone sent an email to pretty much everyone associated with the firehouse an email with nude pictures of Matt attached.” Lily explained this time. “They also set up a fake Facebook account and posted them there. Brian says he’s doing as well as can be expected, but he’s withdrawn and quiet – and he never liked being the center of attention to begin with from what I can tell.”  
“Well, if he’d not taken the pictures in the first place, these things wouldn’t happen. I don’t understand why anyone sends pictures of themselves like that anyway. You have to know it’ll end up on the internet somewhere.” Chloe’s mom shook her head.  
“He didn’t take them.” Sylvie tried to be patient. “They were taken _of_ him, without his consent and without his knowledge, at a firehouse he was working at temporarily. He didn’t know until they were put online.”  
“And he feels violated, I’m sure, and probably traumatized, and like people are staring at him or…god, I can only imagine, like he’s wondering who has seen them that he doesn’t even know about.” Chloe shook her head.

“Are you asking if I think Matt is okay with being a groomsman?” Sylvie guessed.

“I don’t want him to feel pressured to say yes because Joe asked and then be…I guess further traumatized by being up there and people sort of staring and taking pictures, you know? Joe wants him because he’s been so important to Joe at the house for so many years. The guys all really love him.”  
“I know.” Sylvie smiled softly. She couldn’t help wishing though, “it’d be nice if Matt knew that, but I don’t know if he ever will.”  
“So I told Joe I’d ask you – you know him as well as pretty much anyone except Kelly, and Joe says if he asks Severide he might get punched for acting like Casey can’t handle anything just fine. You know Kelly Severide is secretly the president of the Matt Casey fan club.”  
“I guess I can give him president, they _have_ been friends a very long time.” Sylvie joked, relieved that she wasn’t going to have to fight about her ‘plus one’ for the wedding – she had worried for a minute there that Matt was being disinvited from the wedding entirely. “I think it’s okay to ask him. Just make sure the photographer knows not to surprise Matt with any picture-taking, and do it in groups – Kelly will keep Matt distracted and probably laughing most of the day. Those two together are like twelve-year-olds half the time.”

“Thank you.” Chloe nearly gushed. “I had to check, I just can’t stand the idea of pushing him into anything, as awful as he must be feeling. I can’t imagine, if that was me.”

“Thankfully, it seems to have been pretty contained, but just when you do a seating chart, whatever you do, don’t put Matt and Donna near each other at any point. I’m not sure he will ever be entirely over the fact that she opened the pictures accidentally.” Sylvie almost chuckled at the memory of Matt literally ducking from the Chief’s wife, which would be sort of funny, Matt’s complete and abject terror of running into Donna Boden (who adored Matt) if it wasn’t also so infuriating and just sad, that he had been put into that position.


	3. All She Needed Tonight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically just a smut interlude. I must've been feeling some sort of way while writing it.

She was running late to join Matt at Molly’s. It was so close to the new house that they ended up meeting there practically every day. Even if Matt had not been there working, he always wanted to do a drive-by to check on it. He hadn’t lined up any construction projects that she knew about, but he still answered his phone when former clients or family members (including former family members) called him to ask him to ‘take care of’ something, so he didn’t get to work on the house every day he wasn’t on shift. Today, though, she was the one who had been at the house – taking delivery of the new furniture they’d ordered, which of course had come from four different places all of which delivered in different broad two-hour windows. Matt had spent the day at Mrs. Danvers’ house, doing…well, something, he’d said, but Sylvie hadn’t paid that close of attention really to what exactly he was doing. She was pretty certain he spent half his time at Mrs. Danvers’ home just visiting with her. Someday, Matt had promised, he’d take her with him to meet Mrs. Danvers. She was looking forward to it. Then again, he’d also promised that at some point she’d get to meet his mother, but he wasn’t in any hurry to arrange that it was clear. She hustled over to Molly’s, mostly because she was ready to go home and Matt was her ride: Lily had dropped her off after some wedding planning errands early that morning. They had shift tomorrow, and Matt had to be early, which meant he’d be up by 5 am. If she was exceptionally lucky, and they left right now, they could be home by 9:00 and she could ‘talk’ him into…oh, who was she kidding, she wanted to jump his bones. The only problem with that was how grumpy he got if he got less than 6 hours of sleep the night before a shift. He never liked to admit he got grumpy, but he got grumpy. He didn’t sleep enough on shift.

She figured most women would be surprised and worried to walk into a bar to find a group of three women gathered around her boyfriend. Well, maybe not if they were your friends, but Sylvie had never met these women before, she was sure of that – for one thing, they all looked to be about 25. Neither Otis nor Herrmann was tending bar, or at least, they weren’t out front right now. Some guys from third watch were there, watching the hockey. She waved at them, but made her way directly over to Matt. It wasn’t jealousy that prompted her concern. She had no worries about Matt in that regard. He was intensely loyal. That didn’t mean his eyes didn’t occasionally ‘wander’ if a woman at the bar had on a short enough skirt or low-cut blouse (he was attracted to the female form, he _looked_ , he just didn’t look twice, and he wasn’t interested so Sylvie never cared if he glanced if a woman was showing it off) it just meant she knew he wasn’t exactly over there flirting with those women. In fact, as she got closer, he looked distinctly uncomfortable as the women were pretty close to him, no, that one, the brunette, she was definitely touching Matt. His shoulder, but still, touching him.

“Come on, you seem like a guy who would be into some fun.”  
“I’m meeting my girlfriend-“

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re real loyal.”  
“Matt, who’re your friends?” Sylvie asked sharply.

“Hey, babe, you ready to go home?” Matt stood, draining the last gulp of his beer.

“Definitely.” She leaned forward, stepping between two of the women, and kissed him softly.

“Whatever. You’re a fucking asshole anyway.” The brunette nearly spat, but at least the little pack of hyenas walked away.

“Well, I’m sure her opinion of your character is very well-founded and deeply hurtful.” Sylvie rolled her eyes. Matt looked uncomfortable still. “It’s fine, Matt. Someone as hot as you is going to get hit on sometimes if I leave you alone in a bar too long.”  
“That was just weird. I’ve been hit on before, but that was…oddly aggressive.”  
“Well, it doesn’t matter now. And I would like to get home, so _I_ can be aggressive with you.”  
“Really?” He smiled at that.  
“Mm-hmm. I have been waiting to get you home and in bed for the last few hours.” She leaned in, whispering into his ear. “I’ve got an itch someplace only you can scratch.”

“Yeah?” He kissed her firmly, but then led her out of Molly’s. By the time they were at his truck, both of them were letting their hands wander and instead of just settling her into the truck, Matt kissed her hard, his mouth moving against hers and their tongues sliding together, and everything he did felt so good, she could kiss him for hours, truly. She would definitely want his dick later, but for now, he could just keep kissing her like this. As much as she loved him fucking her, the way he kissed was amazing, like she was sexy and precious and more vital to him than oxygen. It was heady and empowering and always made her feel not just wanted but treasured. All that in just his kisses, and the way his hands felt, moving softly over her, though as the pressure of his hands changed, she could feel him getting hungrier, and she felt the same, hands burrowing under his clothes to reach warm bare skin. She wanted him.

“Take me home, Matt.” She managed to speak, pulling away from his mouth only with great determination. He nodded, looked like what he really wanted to do was kiss her again, then groaned loudly, but moved around to the driver’s side.

She kept her hands to herself on the drive, and so did he. It was probably the only way they were going to get home safely. In the elevator up to the apartment, she kissed him again, tired of waiting to touch him again. They got out on the seventh floor, and although they stopped kissing to walk with her in front of him, he was practically walking her down the hall, pressed against her back so closely she could feel the swell of him in his jeans. He had never given her a key (explaining it was pointless to have Kelly make another copy, he was moving out soon enough) which if it kept resulting in her being pressed so closely between the door and him as he unlocked the door while kissing her neck and ear from behind like that, she was just fine with it forever. The door opened and she just about fell through but strong hands caught her, spun her around. She was pressed against the apartment door before she could process that he’d even gotten it fully shut. She was pretty certain that his tongue was mapping new areas of her mouth and damn, he was revved up and aggressive today and fuck if it wasn’t making her insanely turned on. Something about Matt’s usual restraint in his life made the times he let go of restraint (usually in the bedroom) so fucking hot, and she barely managed any sort of thought, coherent or otherwise.

“Where’s Kelly and Stella?” Sylvie somehow managed to ask, before he was practically gnawing on her neck, which made her knees do their damnedest to buckle. 

“Out late, ‘date night’.” Matt told her between his attentions to her neck. She could feel his hot breath on the wet trails his mouth had left behind. He had one hand on her ass, the other on her tits, both rubbing and squeezing in ways that just about convinced her to fuck him right here.  
“Want you. Bedroom.” She managed to gasp out a coherent – mostly - response around his mouth as he’d left her neck to return to her mouth, but she also didn’t do anything else to encourage him to delay what he seemed very intent on doing – namely getting his hands inside her clothes. He was moving fast, but she was nearly as horny as he clearly was, and a quickie sounded pretty damn good right now. Whatever got him inside her, that sounded perfect. She was walking backwards, being half carried by him, as he moved them out of the kitchen towards his bedroom

“So wet.” Matt muttered into her neck as he slipped two fingers inside her. She took a deep breath quickly, knowing he would hit it a split second before he did and she distantly felt her head bang backwards into the door to his bedroom and her knees buckle and it was all just flying higher and higher until she was sure she was going to explode, and he pulled his fingers out.

“No, shit, fuck, no, _Matt_.” She complained, because she was so damned close. He nearly threw her the rest of the way into his room, shutting the door, and pushing her towards the bed, her back pressed to his front once again.

“Need you.” Matt pushed her upper body forward, so her hands instinctively caught her, leaving her basically bent over the bed, her ass against his crotch. His hands quickly undid her belt, and then he was pulling her jeans and underwear down, and it felt like a split second later he was inside her, and the stretch was sudden and sharp. She gasped, but didn’t try to get away, it hurt but was also a little delicious as he thankfully didn’t shove deep right away. She pretty much collapsed onto the bed, and he was pressed against her back and it was hot and sticky and fantastic as he pushed closer and harder, going deeper as her body adjusted quickly, though he was still so big, it was that thin line between wonderful and painful. They were both still mostly dressed, but she didn’t care, this felt so fucking good. He pulled her by the hips back against him firmly, slamming into her hard and deep several times before he backed off slightly and she might’ve keened as he left her half-filled, changing the angle of her hips, then pulling her back by the arms so she was halfway stood back up, she just went where he put her, but then he started moving and the new angle had the head of his cock hitting the same spot his fingers had just played so well and two strokes after she was flying apart, semi-conscious of his arms keeping her from collapsing entirely as every nerve in her body seemed to fire at once, and by the time awareness returned she was pressed flat against the bed again with Matt pounding into her erratically just before he stiffened and groaned and she could feel him coming inside her. He panted against her neck for a few minutes, then slowly slipped from her body, rolling over. She’d managed to gather herself enough to turn over the opposite direction, left staring at the ceiling, her underwear and jeans at her ankles, but her body too blissed out to care if it was ridiculous. He undoubtedly looked just as ridiculous.

“Feel better?” She teased with a warm smile. She certainly did.

“Took the edge off.” He chuckled a little. He sat up, and peeled his shirt off. She groaned theatrically. He looked over at her. “What?”  
“Baby, you taking your shirt off does not help me calm down from that.”

“Then close your eyes.” He teased her, as he stood up and removed his pants and underwear. She realized that he’d somehow managed to remove his boots somewhere between the apartment door and here, so he could kick his pants off. He leaned over to peel off his socks, and the new view was great: his ass and his balls visible between his legs, and she didn’t think there was a single unattractive angle on Matt Casey. Literally even his ass view was great. He even had cute feet. She groaned theatrically again.

“Why are you so sexy?” She asked plaintively.

“If I had to guess?” Matt turned around, leaning down to pull her upright before kissing her. He pulled away after a minute, though. “I’m not, you’re just blinded by the oxytocin and dopamine.”  
“Mm-hmm.” She hoped her facial expression was enough to tell him what she thought of that. He unbuttoned her shirt, slipping it over her shoulders. She liked where this was going. She slipped her bra off quickly, and pulled him into another kiss. His lips parted for her tongue, and she pressed as close against him as she could get. Her right hand slid from his hip to his partly softened dick. The whole thing might have come across really sexy, except she tried to take a step and tripped over her jeans, at her ankles, blocked by her shoes still being on her feet. He laughed, and she swatted his ass with her left hand.

“I was trying to be smooth and sexy.”  
“You are always beautiful and sexy.” Matt reassured her, kissing her softly. She leaned over to take her shoes off and awkwardly untangle her lower legs from the mess of her clothing. He tidied up his own things, then swiftly moved to take hers and put them into the clothes hamper as well. He wasn’t a neat freak, per se, but he really did keep things in a pretty precise order. It was endearing. And a little neurotic. She also took a moment to enjoy the fact that he was apparently comfortable with being naked in his own bedroom again. He’d been so physically shy lately, she knew why, she just was happy to see him getting back to himself. He was not hardly an exhibitionist, but in his own bedroom (and bathroom), he wasn’t exactly shy either. She never thought she’d reach a time in her life when watching a man brush his teeth while naked was comforting, but here she was. She slipped into the bathroom with him, deciding to get ready for bed herself. They both made quick work of their night-time routines, though he finished before her as usual ( _he_ didn’t have to take off make-up and wash his face – he literally had stupidly perfect skin, a quick rinse and he never had serious break-outs, she wondered if he’d ever had a real nasty pimple in his life, probably not, the jerk). She slid into the bed, cuddling into his side as she always did, finding ‘her’ spot against him. The sex was fantastic and hot and everything she could want (including affectionate and fun and loving – who knew you could laugh during hot sex, but he proved you could, and it never made her self-conscious), but this was her favorite part. She knew he loved it too – even if she wasn’t staying over the night, if they had sex, he wanted her to stay and lay with him for a while. Matt Casey loved physical affection, and she had learned quickly that what the guys at work credited to a bad mood for Casey not getting laid enough (not recently, but they used to talk about it) was more accurately a result of his not getting enough _affection_. He got testy and even more stand-offish when he was neglected, and she didn’t intend to ever neglect him. She kissed his chest fondly and reveled in the way he tightened his arm around her slightly in response. That was tired-cuddly-half-asleep-after-sex-Matt for ‘I love you’. It was all she needed tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See what I mean? Not a lot of plot, just establishing the relationship and providing some *ahem* entertainment for the reader.


	4. Nancy Casey

Matt looked a little reluctant to bring up what he was going to bring up. That always made her nervous. The fact that he had waited until she was halfway through a second glass of rose was also not a great indication of his confidence in how this conversation was going to go, but it wasn’t bad enough he was waiting until she was actually drunk. So mid-level nerves.

“It’s, uh…anyway, my mom called yesterday.” Matt paused and took a visibly deep breath, then continued, “she’s, uh, apparently she got engaged and she’d like us to go to dinner with them to celebrate. This week.”  
“She’s getting married? That’s good news. Isn’t it?” She was kind of excited, weirdly like second or third hand, given she hadn’t even met his mother yet.  
“I guess.” Matt didn’t look enthused. “I’ve only met Randy once. I don’t really know him.”  
“But if she’s happy, we should be happy for her.”  
“He reminds me of my dad.” Matt confessed, clearly uncomfortable with that fact.

“She did love your dad, once.”  
“She also shot him. Once.” Matt replied. Sylvie couldn’t help smiling at his very pithy retort, even if she wasn’t at all certain he meant any sort of joke. Matt tried to shrug it off. “So, I was hoping you’d join me for dinner two nights from now. The restaurant is out in Homewood. It’ll just be you and me – Christie already turned her down.”  
“She and your mom still aren’t on good terms, huh?”

“They were never very close.” Matt explained softly. “Dad was hard on all of us, he wanted to kick Christie out of the house when she was sixteen, almost seventeen, and she wrecked the car – and Christie was his favorite. She loved him. They were close, despite how he was.”  
“So you were closer to your mom?”  
“In some ways.” Matt nodded. “I loved my dad, he was my dad. He was also an abusive asshole, mostly to Mom. I always felt like I was in the middle. Between Christie and Mom, Dad and Mom, didn’t matter. But I think it’s time you meet her, at least.”  
“I’d be happy to go with you, and I’m happy to meet your mom.” Sylvie reassured him. “She made _you,_ Matt, I’m probably going to like her.”

“She won’t like you. Just to warn you.” Matt tried to say it gently, and she could tell the annoyance in his voice was about his mother, it was wasn’t directed at her. “She loved Gabby. She’s still mad that I divorced Gabby. Or, actually, Gabby divorced me. That I _let_ Gabby divorce me. In my mom’s world, I should’ve gone to Puerto Rico with her, if I really loved her. It was my job to support my wife in her ambitions, help her get what she wants in life, happy wife-happy life thing. Which is rich as hell, given her taste in men.”

“I didn’t realize your mom knew Gabby that well.”  
“Christie and Mom both really liked Gabby.” Matt replied. “Christie likes you, too. At least, that’s what Violet says. If it’s worth much, Violet likes you better.”  
“She does? Why? I mean, I like Violet, but we haven’t spent that much time together.”  
“Violet says I’m happier now than I was when I was married to Gabby.” Matt looked a little bashful, but he was smiling, too. “So you have the approval of most of the women in my family, anyway. Not that it matters – I’m not going anywhere, no matter what my mother thinks or wants. I just wanted you to be forewarned, forearmed, all that.”  
  


She dressed carefully for dinner with Matt’s mother. She didn’t want to dress too casually, like she didn’t care, but she also didn’t want to be over-dressed and come across like she was desperate or something. She wanted to look like she was pretty enough to date Matt, but not like she was too sexy. Not too old or too young. Everything in moderation. It was hard to hit that ‘meet the mom’ balance. She wondered what it would be like to meet Matt’s dad. A huge part of Matt was always going to be a mystery to her – she’d never even seen a photo of his dad, didn’t even know his first name, or what he’d done for a living, anything. Matt almost never spoke of his family. She knew it was probably a habit from years of his family being an embarrassing thing, subject of rumors and taunts, but she knew she told lots of stories about growing up, so even without meeting them Matt sort of had known her parents. She knew nothing about his mom except she had murdered his dad and she apparently was still hung up on Gabby, even if Matt totally wasn’t. Still, since Matt clearly didn’t take after his dad, he must take after his mom, so she thought she’d probably like Nancy Casey. Probably.

Nancy was not what she expected. For one thing, given Christie’s and Matt’s coloring, she’d expected their mom to be blonde. She was also not nearly as much of a looker – as Dad would put it – as she’d expected given, well, that her daughter was quite pretty, and her son was _Matt_. The eyes, though, those were Matt’s blue eyes, but with a cynicism and darkness that he didn’t have. Of course, he also hadn’t spent fifteen years in prison, Sylvie reminded herself.

“Sylvie, this is my mother, Nancy, and her fiancé, Randy Polinowski. Mom, Randy, this is Sylvie Brett, my girlfriend.”  
“It’s nice to meet you, Sylvie.” Randy smiled at her, then stuck out a hand to Matt, who of course shook it, “good to see you again, Matthew.”

“You, too, Randy – congratulations on the, uh, engagement.” Matt smiled, it was a little put on Sylvie could tell, and he leaned in to hug his mother, then kiss her lightly on the cheek. “Hi, Mom.”  
“Matthew, you always look so handsome.” Nancy’s tone was a little too much, like she was trying too hard, with that compliment. Which made no sense, because Matt was handsome, very much so, there was just something off to her tone. She didn’t have a lot of time to think about it, because then Nancy held out a hand to Sylvie, who took it of course.

“It’s so great to finally meet you, Nancy.”  
“Yes, _finally_.” Nancy shot Matt a somewhat dirty look. “You’ve been sleeping with my son for several months at least. I guess now you’re dating him – he’s actually introducing you to people, not just having you spend the nights in his bed.”  
“Mom.” Matt looked upset already. They weren’t even inside the restaurant. “You haven’t been into the city since before Sylvie and I started dating, and I haven’t had time to get out here. That’s all.”  
“Let’s go inside.” Randy prompted, and Sylvie hoped that dinner would be less awkward than the meeting outside.

Randy was personable enough, but Sylvie could see some of the things Matt didn’t like. He tended to dominant conversation, a ‘one-upper’ who always had to have the better story, or a worse day, or just be that little hair-breadth better than you no matter what. He was clearly a forceful personality, and some of his opinions were more old-fashioned than Matt would agree with. Of course, neither she nor Matt was going to argue in this setting, but Randy clearly expected Matt to be more ‘in charge’ than he was. Weirdly, though, his mother seemed determined to make sure that Matt’s opinions, on any topic, were quickly squelched in favor of her own, or Randy’s, or even Sylvie’s. Mostly, she steamrolled over him, and Matt never stuck with any attempt to assert himself.

“We’re getting married in May, Matthew, just so you know. I’d like you to be there. I won’t count on your sister attending or my granddaughter.” Nancy announced, after they’d finished paying the check. Well, really, after Matt had paid. Apparently since it was ‘celebratory’ and they were ‘celebrating’ Randy and Nancy, Matt was paying.

“Oh, that soon?” Sylvie asked, surprised a little. “That’s great, though, spring weddings are beautiful.”  
“No point in waiting.” Randy stated firmly. “Neither of us want another big production, we’ve had those weddings, the marriage didn’t turn out that great, so maybe a smaller wedding will mean a different result for the marriage too.”  
“All I need is Randy, and my son.” Nancy smiled broadly. “But I’d love for Christie to come, you’ll talk to her, won’t you, Matthew? I won’t expect her to come, but you’ll talk to her, I know you will. And Violet. The only grandchild I’ll ever have it seems and I barely know her.”  
“She’s in high school.” Matt pointed out. “She’s busy. I’ll talk to Christie, but-“  
“Thank you, Matthew, I knew you’d try. You’ve always been such a good boy. I’ll get the information to you later this month. You’ve always supported me, Matthew.”  
“How’s work been, Matthew?” Randy asked, without giving Matt any chance to respond to his mother’s declaration.

“Uh, you know, typical.” Matt replied with a small shrug. “Nothing too bad recently, which is good.”  
“Are you still living with your friend, the one with the girl’s name?” Nancy asked. “Not Andy, the other one.” Sylvie saw Matt flinch just a little at the casual use of Andy Darden’s name. Andy had been dead for seven years, surely Nancy should’ve remembered that at least.  
“Kelly Severide. Yeah, I’m still-“  
“Really? A man your age? You should’ve owned for years by now, Matthew.” Randy stated firmly. “How do you expect to keep a girl like Sylvie around if you aren’t stable enough to take care of her?”  
“I’m not worried about his finances-“ Sylvie started.

“Every woman worries about how much a man makes, trust me.” Randy cut her off. “You say you don’t, but you do. Just like that crap about ‘size doesn’t matter’, all a lie told to comfort the losers and the guys with small dicks, but those are the guys women ditch, too.”  
Matt very nearly ended up wearing his mouthful of beer. Clearly the idea of his mother marrying was one thing, her boyfriend actually talking about dick size was a little too much for him. It wasn’t that Matt was a prude, Sylvie actually sort of agreed that was kind of blunt for dinner with your fiancee’s son. Randy hadn’t actually tried to say he didn’t have any such problems, but it was clearly implied. Talking about sex in any way while meeting the family of your significant other was a bad idea, Sylvie figured – tacky at best, outright offensive at worst. Randy continued,

“Women care about both of those things, Matt – you’ve got what you’ve got when it comes to dick size, but every man can sort his finances out to at least get the woman a house. Some of us are doing just fine in both.”  
“Actually, Matt just bought a house, we’re fixing it up together,” Sylvie announced because that was rude and clearly some strange sort of dig at Matt and she wasn’t going to stand for that, nope, not one little bit. “And trust me, he has a million dollars worth of both house and dick.”  
She could not believe that just came out of her mouth. That was so inappropriate. His mother was sitting right there. Even if Randy was kind of a jerk, Nancy no doubt wanted to know absolutely nothing about her son’s sex life. Matt was staring at her like her head had just spun around like she was in _The Exorcist_. Randy looked surprised and Nancy just looked speechless. Thankfully, Matt did manage to say something after a moment.

“I was going to tell you, uh, yeah – I bought a house. The insurance company and courts finally settled my claim from the condo I bought when Gabby and I got engaged-“  
“Gabby’s the first wife, right?” Randy asked Nancy, almost quietly, probably hoping to be discrete.

“How is Gabby? Sylvie, you knew Gabby very well, didn’t you? You worked with her on the ambulance.” Nancy asked.  
“We were partners her last few years at 51 and in Chicago, yes.”  
“Wait, you’re sleeping with your ex-wife’s former work partner?” Randy asked, looking at Matt oddly. “That what caused the divorce?”  
“No, I only started seeing Sylvie several months ago.”

“You only just got divorced, Matthew.” Nancy said sharply.

“Gabby left me almost two years ago.” Matt corrected, starting to just sound tired. “Everything was finalized well over a year ago.”  
“You should’ve held onto her, Matthew. Gabby was so good for you. She never let you get by with anything – you know how you get, so selfish sometimes, and inside your own head, refusing to talk – and she’s doing such noble work. You threw it away because you didn’t want children.” Nancy shook her head.

“That’s not what-“  
“That’s what you told me, you told me she left because you fought about her wanting to get pregnant and you didn’t want children.”  
“That’s not-“  
“Really, Matthew, I don’t know why you don’t want children – you’re so handsome, you have such good genes.”  
“Mom.”  
“Nancy, leave him alone. If he’s not interested in being a father, at least he won’t mess it up, like his father did. You know these things run in lines like that – father to son and so on.”  
“No, Matthew isn’t very much like Greg was.” Greg, Sylvie presumed, was Matt’s dad’s name, good to know. “He doesn’t have that anger in him, that spite and that hurtful streak. Still, Sylvie, don’t let him string you along like he did Gabby, or like Hallie did to him before: if he doesn’t marry you in a year, dump him.”

“Mom.”  
“I’m just saying, Matthew, any man who waits that long, he isn’t decisive enough.”  
“I’m getting tired, and we have a long drive back into the city.” Sylvie almost subtly ended the conversation, and the evening.

Matt was quiet for the first several minutes of the drive back into Chicago proper. He seemed upset, so she let him have his time to process. Pushing Matt too quickly only resulted in fighting. He needed to settle his own thoughts and decide on his own what (and if) he wanted to share with her.

“Mom wasn’t entirely wrong about why Gabby left me.” Matt finally spoke, his voice soft and tentative. She detected a lot of hurt in it, embarrassment, shame even. She didn’t like any of that in his voice.

“Gabby mentioned you guys were trying and then it seemed like the next day she left. It seemed really sudden.”  
“She didn’t get pregnant the first month. I figured we keep trying, it's not exactly an unpleasant effort, trying...well, maybe it was for her. She went Gabby Dawson on it, anyway, wanted the trying over with as soon as possible.” Matt sighed. “The doctor said no fertility issue, but if she got pregnant, she had about a ten percent shot of a fatal hemorrhage from a burst aneurysm, a side effect or complication, whatever, of the ectopic pregnancy.”  
“Gabby made a decision without asking you.” Sylvie surmised, both knowing Dawson but also knowing from Matt’s semi-spoken comments about what had gone wrong between him and Gabby.

“I wanted to consider adoption. After Louie, she said no way. She got angry that I’d even looked into it without her. I told her I couldn’t risk losing her, I loved her too much. She said it was her risk, not mine. That basically it was none of my business if she got pregnant, she couldn’t become ‘dependent’ on me, or my feelings, or what I wanted.” Sylvie wondered if the fact that he was not having to face her, had the perfect excuse to not look at her right now, was helping him talk about this. Even from just his profile and the tone of his voice and everything in his body language, she knew he’d been terribly hurt by what he was saying – but of course, she’d known he’d been deeply wounded by Gabby’s departure. “I told her we either had a kid together, or we _didn’t_ have one together. We couldn’t do it without each other.”  
“That’s when she left?  
“Walked out the door, after ripping into me for getting information about adoption without telling her, went straight to Hatcher and asked about going to Puerto Rico, without saying a word about it to me until she’d already decided and signed up.”  
“That sounds, actually, typically hypocritical for Gabby. I loved her, she was kick-ass in a lot of ways,” Sylvie had to admit that, “but she sometimes kicked my ass, and definitely yours, in the pursuit of what she wanted, too.”  
“I didn’t want you to think I don’t want kids. I’m not saying right now, no pressure, but I’m definitely open to having them, if you are.”  
“I already knew you want kids. Matt, that’s the worst kept ‘secret’ in 51. _Everyone_ knows.”  
“I’m not worried about my genes or…family is more than blood and DNA. Gabby was scared we’d lose another kid, like we did Louie. The odds of that are so incredibly low, but she said she wanted her own baby. I didn’t even mention surrogacy, didn’t get that far. I just want a family, don't care if it's my genes. The times I had someone to come home to, a family that I lived with, those were the best times.”  
“You’ll have that, Matt, someday. Not in the next forty weeks, don’t worry. At least not if…well, it’s a good thing neither of us are in the mood for sex tonight, let’s leave it at that.”

“Do you…why don’t we just stay at your place tonight? It’s closer, and I’m tired. I’d also like the company tonight, if you don’t mind.”  
“Oh, it’s such a problem.” Sylvie rolled her eyes. “I’ve made it so obvious I hate sleeping with you.”  
“I just don’t want to make any issues with Cruz or Otis. I _am_ their boss.” Matt reasoned. "Has to be a little weird for them, first thing in the morning."  
“They can get over it. Stella sure has at your place. I think Otis is over it, and Cruz never really had a problem.”


	5. Three Months

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me a while to plot out this story, because the timeline is reaching late winter & early spring, which is basically right now. I'm going to be launching ahead into the coming summer months. Though I strive for realism, I cannot bring myself to write what is going on in major cities in the US (and around the world) right now. A Chicago in lockdown, with our people dying alone in ICUs (like my childhood friend's dad a few days ago), I just can't bring myself to write. I struggled for a few days trying to do so, and I just ended up depressed. So I'm abandoning realism in some ways in this story - Otis will never ever die in my world and in my world there is no Covid-19 apparently either. The REAL Chicago this March, April, May, and June will not be nearly so nice as the one I write. If we're real lucky, the City of Big Shoulders will be rubbing shoulders with one another again in July. Anyway, long notes are bad, so...enjoy the update. 
> 
> CRAP! Almost forgot the Trigger Warnings - Discussion of nonconsensual dissemination of private images, sexual harassment, borderline stalking (imo), and the creation of deepfake images herein. It includes the "doxing" of the victim. If those things will disturb you, please read with caution or wait and skip ahead to Chapter 6.

“Sylvie, can I see you in my quarters for a few minutes?” Of course she nodded and stood up, following Matt towards his quarters but she also caught the concerned looks from everyone else on second shift. It wasn’t that Matt called her ‘Sylvie’ on shift, he did that a lot just like he’d often (at least in the house) called Dawson ‘Gabby’ while on shift, it was the _way_ he’d asked. Normally when he was all ‘Captain Casey’ everything was confident and collected, but this had sounded tentative, worried, maybe even scared. It was very _un_ -Captain-Casey. Given that he’d been in an hour-long closed-door meeting in the Chief’s office, no one thought that was good.

“Matt, what’s wrong?”  
“You remember what I said about going out for a drink with Ritter and Eric a couple nights ago?”  
“Did you pick up some torrid gay affair?” She teased, but seeing his face she realized she should not have done so. He had gone out of a desire to show solidarity with Ritter, which she liked, that Matt was not afraid to go to a gay bar to meet one of his guys for a drink just because it was a ‘gay’ bar – Ritter had invited him, and he went (so had Herrmann). “Matt, you went for one drink. You were home by 9 pm. What happened?”  
“This, uh, one of the guys at the bar was hitting on me, kind of aggressively. Not as aggressively as some women have hit on me, nothing offensive, but he was…he came on strong. And he acted like I was pretending to be straight.”  
“You didn’t say anything when you got home.”  
“About what? Some gay guy hitting on me? Not the sort of thing you tell your girlfriend. Besides, if Severide overheard, I’d never hear the end of it. He called me ‘pretty boy’ for the first five years I knew him – Kelly Severide acted like _I_ was the pretty one. I should’ve punched him for it. He finally stopped, about the time he said I looked like I actually had to shave each morning.”

“So, why are you telling me now? I’m not going to be threatened or jealous – I have a pretty good understanding I think of your interest level in sleeping with a guy.”  
“I have no problem with Ritter, or gay guys, whatever, but I…do not understand why anyone finds men attractive.” Matt wrinkled his nose sort of adorably. “I’m glad you do, don’t get me wrong, but men are kind of ugly.”  
“I will politely but firmly disagree with you on that.” Sylvie leaned forward to kiss his cheek softly. “I think you’re very nice to look at.”  
“This guy is a friend of Eric’s. I guess Eric asked him later why he was a jerk to me, that I was Ritter’s boss and I’d been really supportive, Ritter didn’t need this guy – Jake – didn’t need Jake making it awkward or something. Jake told them of course I was ‘supportive’ because apparently, I’m secretly gay and using websites to hook up with gay men for sex. He pulled up some of the websites.”  
“Are you kidding me?” She knew where he was going with this. “Those pictures, again? I thought we were done with that?”  
“It’s the internet, Sylvie. It’s never going to be done, it’s _never_ going to be gone.” Matt looked so damned tired and defeated now. “I wanted you to know, before CPD or the city investigator, or IAD comes around asking about this. Ritter told me, I reported it up the chain, and to the police. It’s all part of the case, I had to tell them. But yeah, now Ritter and Eric have seen pictures of me naked. Half of them are photoshopped to make them more explicit, I guess.”

“Can’t the police take the photos down or something? They’re nonconsensual.”  
“They’re contacting the websites to take down the profiles but it’s the internet. Once it’s out there, it’s permanent. Ritter said they’re on a bunch of hook-up apps, dating apps, whole profiles set up like I’m looking for guys. Which explains all the stupid phone calls I’ve been getting.”  
“Wait, what phone calls?”  
“I thought it was a wrong number thing, but I keep getting calls from guys talking about the posts I made or meets I said I wanted. A couple the last few days have gotten pretty graphic. I figured some guy typed his number wrong. Matt isn’t exactly an unusual name, weird coincidence but it never occurred to me that…my pictures, naked pictures of me, or with my face anyway, or most of my body but some parts, uh, inflated or changed a bit, are up there on these websites, with stuff about how I want…yeah, sex basically.”  
“Wait, your real name and number is up there?”  
“Real name, real job, real number, real everything apparently. I got a call today from a guy who wanted to fuck me in my bunker gear.” Matt looked humiliated and embarrassed and just wrecked. “I checked that voicemail while I was finishing up a call, the car wreck earlier today. I was _in_ my bunker gear. I’ve never felt as gross, no matter how much soot and debris I’ve crawled through. I had to tell the investigators from IAD about it a few minutes ago.”  
“Oh my god, Matt. I don’t…I’m so sorry.” She moved over to him, having sat on his bunk several moments ago while he sat at his desk. She wanted, needed, to be close to him right now. She moved his arms so she could sit across his lap and hug him sort of sideways.

“It just keeps getting worse.” Matt admitted after a moment of silence. “Ritter had to explain to Eric, the whole mess, and apparently, Jake showed them the profiles, I mean…those pictures were on that profile. Ritter works for me. I can’t…how do I expect anyone to respect me after this? With these profiles up, like I’m trolling for gay hook-ups, or some of them were groups and ‘niche interests’ which I think was Ritter’s polite candidate way of saying that they’re fetishes.”

“Everyone here knows that’s not you, Matt. Of course they still respect you. None of this matters to them, to us.”  
“It matters to me.” Matt replied, sounding so lost it broke her heart a little. “I’ve tried my whole life to get away from the taint of my mom and my dad, to not just be known as the guy whose mom murdered his dad, to build a reputation, and now there’s this stuff, it’s out there, and it’s my name, Sylvie. Once you lose your name, you lose everything.”

“You won’t lose me. Or Kelly. Or anyone here.”  
“There’s photos of me, I was…shit, Sylvie, she took photos when I was in that hospital bed. So now there’s photos of me, naked, in a bed, out on the internet, put up there like I want strangers to call me for random sex. In the shower. Some of them are what the investigators called deepfakes, where the real photos were taken and manipulated and photoshopped onto other bodies doing…and it looks like me. Parts of it _is_ me. It feels like everywhere I go, someone will have seen this, will know. I can’t figure out what I did to deserve this-“  
“You didn’t do anything, Matt. Baby, no one could ever deserve this, but you especially. You’ve spent your entire adult life just trying to help people.”  
“Thank God I’m not still in politics. I thought billboards about my mom and fliers about working at Stilettoes was bad – imagine these blown up onto billboards.” Matt shook his head. “I won’t blame you if you don’t want to be involved with me right now-“  
“Matt Casey.” She clapped her hand across his mouth, not letting him get an inch, not even a millimeter, further down that path. “I love you. I am not leaving you because someone hurt you. I am not leaving you at all, for any reason. I know you can’t see it right now, but I am choosing to have faith, that this will work out okay, that the profiles will be taken down, and it will all be okay. Even if it never entirely goes away, I am still going to be right here, Team Matt Casey, 100%. Okay?”  
“I love you, so much.” He looked up at her, meeting her eyes fully. “I’m sorry I brought this mess into your life.”  
“You didn’t. You have brought only good things into my life.”

“To suit your hopeful mood, there _was_ one piece of good news.”  
“Oh, what’s that?”  
“Gayan only had access to my official personnel file. Phone number, email, hell even what high school I graduated from, where I work out of, but it still had my old address. At least no one can just ‘drop by’ as some of the messages say they will.”  
“They posted your home address?”  
“Yeah, but she didn’t know about the fire.” Matt took a deep breath. “Sylvie, this isn’t at all the way I wanted to ask you about this, and it’s unromantic as hell, and I hate it, but I was going to ask anyway, I swear, I just wanted to find a better time and place and way to do it.”  
“Matt, just ask.”  
“I want to put the new house in your name, well both our names. I want you to be one of the members of the property trust I’m putting it in. That way, after this, it’s not listed by my name at all. We can get a court order, because of the criminal case, to suppress the publication of my name with the trust at all. It’ll be ours, and just to be very clear, I want you to move in with me in _our_ house.”  
“Okay, you’re right, not the most romantic setting, but yes, of course, Matt, of course I want to…I want to be your partner in this, and I want to live with you.” She kissed him as if to seal the deal. “I want to wake up to you every morning and fall asleep with you every night. If I had my way, I’d share that bunk with you every night on shift and not just because Mouch snores. That’s my spot right next to you, and I’m very possessive of it.”  
“I’m sorry I asked like this. I really had planned to do it at your birthday dinner, nicely, with like…some sort of romantic attempt at least.”

“Matt, all that matters to me is that we’re together and we’re happy. And that the police hopefully shut this crap down because it’s hurting you. But you and me, no matter what, we’re a team now. Not just with the house. With everything. Okay?”  
“Okay.” He nodded, a small smile on his face. She couldn’t help it, she had to kiss him again. The kiss got deeper and she managed to not break away from it even while she shifted so she was straddling his lap. She wanted to be closer to him, to make sure he felt how much she loved him, that she wasn’t going anywhere. Lips and tongues caressed one another, and she purposefully got lost in him, in being right here in this moment with him, just reveling in the feel and smell and taste of Matt, taking comfort in the solidness of him just as much as she hoped he would take comfort in the love and support and solidness she was offering. Later, she vowed to herself, she was so calling in every favor she had ever been owed by everyone in law enforcement that she knew. She was going to start with Trudy, let Trudy decide to escalate or not as needed, but surely Intelligence would find a way to make those images go away, make those profiles go away, god knew Voight and his crew had made the seemingly impossible happen before. That was later. For now, she was just going to enjoy kissing the face off her boyfriend, who had bought them a house, and who wanted to live with her in that house.

“You two could at least close the blinds.” Kelly teased loudly through the door as he knocked hard on the glass. He gave them a second, just a second, then opened the door (which given yes, they’d failed to close the blinds, was pointless for privacy anyway). “Hey, man, we’re getting Portillo’s for dinner, you in? Usual?”  
“Have I ever not been in for Portillo’s?” Matt asked, a little breathless from the kissing.

“You two looked like you might be busy through dinner.” Kelly shrugged.

“I actually need to go restock the rig.” Sylvie said, standing up from his lap. Kelly laughed, and pointedly turned around. Matt threw a pen at the back of Kelly’s head. Sylvie glanced down, and yeah, Matt had definitely taken a bit of interest, but it wasn’t that blatant. She leaned down, kissing Matt softly again. “Let me know when I need to sign the papers.”  
“Of course, I’ll set it up as soon as possible.” Matt replied. She walked out of the office, slipping around Kelly. He raised his eyebrows at her, and grinned broadly as he walked out of the bunk room with her.  
“I told you, three months.”  
“What?”  
“I told you to remember I said ‘three months’.”  
“You mean…”  
“I know Matt Casey. Three months ‘til he asked you to move in with him. I’ve known him a long time.” Kelly leaned in, almost laughing at her surprised look. “I got money on the first two weeks in May, by the way.”

“What?” Why did he insist on talking in riddles so often? It was kind of a jerk move.   
“You’ll figure it out.” Kelly was definitely laughing now. “I’m happy for you guys. He needs good in his life right now. You’re good for him.”

“I already knew I had your approval, but thanks. At least his friends like me. His mother hates me. She loves Gabby Dawson, though.”  
“She likes Gabby because Gabby treated Matt exactly like she does – like he’s a lot less important than whatever she wants to do in that moment: he can do things her way or he can get left behind.” Kelly shrugged easily. “The good news is that Casey was barely sixteen when his mom went to prison – so he’s never exactly relied on her opinion in women. You make him happy, Brett. Don’t worry about anything else.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you might have noted my projecting a love of Portillo's onto Matt Casey. Yes, Portillo's is one of the things I miss about living in Chicago. Not for love nor money can I get a decent Italian Beef sandwich in Texas. Texas barbecue is good, but sometimes a Chicago girl needs Portillo's. Proper pizza also would not go awry. 
> 
> I try to make my story as "realistic" as possible in regards to using a lot of real places, restaurants, bars, etc., in their real locations in Chicago. That said, it has been a lot of years since I actually lived in or near Chicago, so if some places don't exist anymore or have otherwise changed, please forgive me.


	6. A Birthday Present to Myself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another pretty much smutty interlude. Out of a clearly neurotic cradle-Catholic guilt complex, I cannot post this tomorrow on Easter Sunday. So you guys get another chapter today! [Also, I'm working on chapter 13, so I'm far enough ahead I can post an extra without worrying about ending up with gaps in my posting - putting the holiday weekend to good use clearly]
> 
> The show has given us no indication when Matt's or Sylvie's birthdays are but in my "world" Matt is a Scorpio (November 18) and Sylvie is a Pisces (March 18). I have completely made those up, but if you're keeping track of such random things in my stories, there you go.

“Hey, babe,” Sylvie slipped between Matt and the bathroom counter, wrapping her arms around his waist. He was still slightly damp from his shower, and with only a towel barely slung around his hips, she couldn’t help pulling him in for a kiss. The scratch from his beard stubble at least kept her from getting too comfortable, since they really needed to get going. 

“You need to shave.” She pointed out.

“I was getting to that. Then this incredibly sexy woman distracted me by sticking her tongue in my mouth.”  
“You love it.”  
“I do, and I’d be happy to show you how much.” He leaned in to kiss her again, but she pulled back from him.   
“No time for that right now, but,” Sylvie winked at him, “I do have something I want you to do for me.”  
“Oh, so you were just trying to buy me off with a kiss?”  
“Nope, that was just because you’re sexy in that towel.” Sylvie reached over and grabbed the bag she’d left on the closed toilet lid. “I want you to wear something.”  
“There’s a dress code for what you insisted was going to be a ‘casual dinner’ date now?”  
“Kind of a birthday present to myself. In fact, you and I will be the only ones who even know about it.” Sylvie held out the article of clothing in question. “I want you to wear these tonight.”  
“Uhm…okay.” Matt took them, carefully, like they might be a bomb, then raised his eyebrows at her. “Are these…satin underwear?”

“They’re a little, uh, kind of a lot skimpier than your usual cut but I think you’ll get over that. Besides, the website I read said that bigger men should pay attention to the width of the ‘u’ in the front and that briefs have a more generous ‘u’ so you should be fine.”  
“You researched underwear for me?”  
“Well,” Sylvie blushed a little, “I was looking for something special for me at first, but your underwear is pretty threadbare and one search led to another and yes, I did.”

“That’s a little weird and a little sexy.” Matt replied with a smile, looking over the briefs she’d handed him. They were satiny, navy blue, and what the website called a bikini cut. They were definitely made for men, but they were not much like his standard cotton boxer-brief. They looked a lot more like speedos than anything else, except they were a satiny, silky, material that glinted a bit in the bathroom lights. She _really_ wanted to see him in just those little blue briefs.

“I know how you feel about satin and I really like the idea of seeing you in these.”  
“So what you’re saying,” Matt leaned in, his voice dropping in both volume and pitch, which he knew made her hot, “is you’re going to get off on me wearing these, knowing that I’ve got these on under my jeans.”  
“Well, maybe not get _off_.” Sylvie allowed. “But I will definitely get _hot_.”

“If I wear these, do you promise I’ll get a reward tonight?”  
“Mm.” Sylvie nodded, kissing him softly. “Probably more than one reward.”  
“How about a little down payment?”  
“Sounds good,” Sylvie agreed, but pushed against his chest as he moved closer. “Except we have a reservation, and we need to be there in half an hour and you haven’t shaved yet, or gotten dressed. We don’t have time.”  
“I can be quick.”  
“Actually, you suck at being quick.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Matt laughed, but he kissed her chastely. “And I’ll wear your little gift, if only to earn that reward.”  
“Uh-huh. Trust me, you’ll love those things.”

“One condition, though.” Matt looked pretty serious suddenly. “No one at 51 ever hears about this – Mouch still gets teased about his Japanese girlfriend’s taste in underwear, and I don’t want to be hearing about this at work for a decade, no matter how sexy you think it is.”

“Oh, trust me, you in those is not even a mental image I want to share with absolutely anyone else. Now, hurry, I don’t want to be late.” She kissed him quickly again, and slid away from him to finish getting ready herself.

She’d picked the restaurant, a mostly casual place that specialized in ‘home cooking’ that she loved because it felt a little like being back home but also in the city so it was perfect, or at least, she felt like it was perfect for her. She and Matt shared one side of a booth, which earned them a couple odd looks from some people but which their waitress clearly thought was adorable. Aside from cuddling a bit, and sharing a single dessert, it wasn’t like they did much in the restaurant, just a low-key but constant flirting that she loved. After dinner, Matt had her backed against the passenger door to the truck pretty much as soon as they were in the small parking lot. He kissed her heavily, pushing their bodies flush together. 

“Matt, we’re in public.” Sylvie protested once he finally pulled back. 

“This is your fault.” Matt pointed out firmly.

“What is my fault?” Sylvie asked, but her question was answered when Matt rocked his pelvis forward slightly. He was ‘hanging’ differently than usual, but she could definitely tell he was half hard. She knew better than to think even that heavy of a kiss was the reason for it.

“These things were your idea and now…it’s like I’m fifteen again and I have no control over it.”  
“You _really_ like the feel of satin, don’t you?” She grinned, pleased with herself. “Who would’ve thought my big tough firefighter would like something so soft and girly-“  
“Don’t.” Matt pulled away suddenly. 

“Matt, I was just teasing.” That was an uncharacteristically sudden shift in his mood. For all that Matt was what most people at 51 called moody and secretive, he was consistent with it and predictable: you could see his moods come in and fade out, there weren’t usually sharp turns without an obvious cause.   
“Yeah.” Matt scoffed, heading around the truck. Sylvie climbed into the passenger seat, a little surprised at Matt’s reaction. Usually he took teasing pretty well, especially teasing that was going to lead to sex. Matt climbed into his seat, pulling the door closed harder than was necessary. He was also muttering under his breath something about never telling anyone stupid stuff and Sylvie grabbed his arm.   
“Matt, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”  
“You didn’t _hurt_ -“  
“Stop acting like some stupid macho jerk, Matt. You can pretend you’re not a sweet, sensitive guy all you want but I know you. You can _be_ an insensitive ass, sure, but deep down – you’re a total teddy bear.”  
“I’m not some…I’m not a girl, Sylvie. And I’m not girly, either.”  
“I never once said you were, or meant to imply that you were. I know damn well you’re male, Matt – I’m probably more familiar with your masculinity and heterosexuality than anyone else on the planet right now. I shouldn’t have teased you, and I’m sorry.”  
“It was your idea.”  
“I know, and trust me, knowing you’re enjoying them is making me…really look forward to getting home tonight.” Sylvie had to acknowledge, just keeping her eyes from going to his crotch. She really did want to see him in those, just those, underwear. “Matt, liking the feel of something isn’t good or bad, male or female. Lots of guys like silky or satiny underwear, that’s why so much of it is made. I figured that was why you liked that one time-“  
“We’re not talking about that. I never should’ve told you.”  
“No, Matt.” Sylvie shook his arm slightly to emphasize her point. “I love that you told me. We need to trust each other with things like this. I’m not going to ask you to recreate it or anything. I’m not sure I’d even like seeing you in my underwear, which apparently, Hallie did, at least that once. What I’m saying is, you liked that not because it was _Hallie_ ’s underwear, or for women in general, but because it was _satin_. That was my point. You like that fabric against sensitive skin. It’s something I enjoy knowing about you.”  
“I don’t…just don’t…I’m not _like that_.”   
“I’m well aware.” Sylvie reassured, though she found his insistence a little troubling. She was beginning to think she needed to talk to someone, just for advice, about Matt’s fierce dedication to a certain amount of masculine posturing – she had a feeling Matt had heard a lot about being ‘girly’ at some point and was still reacting against it. Especially given everything that had happened in the last couple weeks. “I’m sorry if I upset you. I hope it didn’t ruin the night.”  
“It’s your birthday dinner.” Matt sighed, sounding aggravated, but mostly at himself now. “I’m sorry for being a selfish jerk. I shouldn’t have reacted like that.”

“Matt, if you’re upset, I want you to tell me.” He was so tiring sometimes. It was a good thing he was also almost unspeakably brave and kind and good, and damned hot, or she might get more annoyed than she did. “You know, I meant to ask once we were home, but since we’re talking about it now – how’s the cut feel?”  
“Not as bad as I expected. Though it’s a little…restrictive. And I mean that _before_ it came to attention.”  
“Well, it’s not like you’re going to wear them every day. Just for me, sometimes.”  
“Not in public anymore. I’m too old for this shit.”

“The good news is we won’t have to be ‘in public’ again until my parents get here in the morning, so we can celebrate every single reaction to my present to myself.”

She had talked him into staying the night at her place almost solely because her parents were coming in the next day, so she wasn’t actually going to shift (he had not taken furlough, she suspected he was reluctant to have a floater officer on 81 again so soon – he was truly very possessive of that truck) and it was going to be a lot easier to be at her own apartment already than to have to run over from his place. They’d never actually had sex in her bed, and very rarely spent the night there – Matt just never seemed comfortable with being at her place. She had discretely asked Lily and Chloe to take the boys out tonight, so at least when they came home they’d be alone. Still, she kept it to kissing only as they moved through her apartment, none of the trailed clothing they sometimes left at his place (which Severide never said a thing to her about, though Stella sometimes did tease her, she figured Kelly teased Matt about it). Only once they were safely insider her bedroom with the door shut did she push him gently but firmly away from her.

“Take it off.”

“What?”  
“Strip for me. I want to see you in just those underwear.”  
“Seriously?”  
“Uh-huh.” She nodded, waving a hand to encourage him. “Come on. Did you think I was joking, Matt? I have had serious fantasies about seeing you in just those briefs for weeks.”  
“I’m not…you don’t want some sort of like dancing strip tease thing, right? Because I’m the world’s worst dancer.”

“I have seen you dance and you’re not _that_ bad.” She smiled warmly at him. “Mouch is definitely worse. Although you were pretty adorably bad at zumba. No striptease, just you, down to the briefs.”

He stripped quickly, looking a bit grateful that she didn’t want him to try to be ‘sexy’ or anything like that. In some ways he was a very graceful man, and he could be very sexy when he wasn’t trying, but he was also incredibly self-conscious and awkward in some ways, and if he started being too smooth or having ‘moves’ or whatever, he wouldn’t be her Matt. She didn’t want him to be anything other than what he was. He finished taking his clothes off, and stayed standing right where he was, just kind of looking at her like she was supposed to give him further directions. She was too busy just staring at him. He looked fantastic. He always looked fantastic but he looked, well, like her fantasy. Broad shoulders, firm abs, narrow hips, and a nice moderately-sized bulge in the navy satin material to hint at what was still covered.

“Turn around.” She managed to force out. He turned, arms out to his side, stopping when he had his back to her – exactly what she’d wanted even though she’d not actually said to do that. He truly had the most fantastic butt she had ever seen on a guy. The briefs showed it off better than his usual boxer-briefs for sure. Plus, the shine of the satin added a nice effect. She also loved his back and shoulders, she loved how she could see the muscles play as he moved, even as he stood there with his arms out, she could see the strength in him. Slowly, as if waiting for her to complain, he turned back around, his arms dropping to his sides again. She was so distracted by how edible he looked that it took her a few minutes to drag her eyes up to his face.

“Matt, baby, you look so fantastic.” She assured him, seeing a look on his face that was insecure or uncertain or something not quite comfortable with her looking at him like this. She wanted him to feel like she felt when she wore his favorite things, the way she felt feminine and attractive and so powerful because she could do that to him, cause that look in his eyes, she never felt more beautiful than when he was looking at her naked or nearly naked and his eyes lit up like she was every fantasy he’d ever had. She moved over to him, pulling him into a soft fond kiss. “You are so incredibly sexy, do you know that?” What she really wanted was to take a picture of him, just like this, but Matt had never much liked having his photo taken and right now, after everything, she didn’t think she’d get him in front of a camera for much of anything, especially not in something as relatively skimpy as this. “I love looking at you. And I want you to leave those on for now. But, I am wearing an awful lot of clothes, and I think you should help me fix that.”  
He met her eyes then, and if he still looked like he didn’t believe her that he looked good or he just wasn’t comfortable in anything other than his usual boxer-briefs, he also had a seed of dirty in his eyes that she knew would be blossoming in moments. He kissed her, good and hard and hot, tongue sweeping into her mouth as soon as she parted her lips, and while they kissed, both of their hands moved rapidly to divest her of her clothes. They had to pause for a moment to remove her shoes and socks – there wasn’t a greatly sexy way she’d ever found to do that – but once she was down to her underwear he picked her up, carrying her the few feet to her bed. He was over her, which she always loved, and then he slid down her body, freeing her from her bra easily. She had started wearing front-clasp bras solely because he always looked so yes, that look right there, so just completely turned on by watching the bra part in the middle and he could sweep it open. His fingers and mouth took plenty of advantage of the newly revealed tits and nipples for several minutes, and she was happy to let him have his fill of it. Then he continued south, down her body, until he was basically kneeling between her legs as she lifted her hips to let him slide her underwear off.

“So fucking sexy.” Matt almost seemed to be talking to himself. “Such a pretty pussy, fuck, I can smell it, fuck.” He growled, and he damn near dove into her pussy face first, strong arms spreading her legs to accommodate his shoulders as he attacked her pussy with his mouth. She bit back a cry of both surprise and pleasure as he went to work, hard and fast. It felt too fantastic for her to do anything more than go with it and there was no point being shy or self-conscious with Matt, so she practically rode his face, as much as she could in this position anyway, and just went with the wild sensations he evoked, unashamedly grabbing his head and encouraging him as she wanted him to just keep doing that. He didn’t stop or even let up after her first orgasm, and she never really came down just started building to another. She barely bit off a scream when the second orgasm hit and she felt like she was going to fly apart, she knew she was being noisy but she couldn’t help it. She felt his tongue all over her, everywhere, and she was still coming, her heart was going to arrest, she knew it, she just kept coming and she felt his tongue go where it hadn’t before, up inside her pussy, fuck, she was going to die, he was literally going to kill her, heart failure or brain aneurysm, caused by his mouth, back on her clit and sucking so hard, his fingers inside her, she was sure she was going blind, all she could see was lights behind her eyes, and finally she felt an explosion of pleasure like a giant wave smash into her and then she must’ve blacked out for a moment, but when she was aware of anything again, Matt had eased up enough for her to gather her wits and really bury her fingers in his short hair and pull him away from her because it was like sharp electric bursts, painful now more than pleasurable.

“God, Matt, killed me.” She managed around panting breaths.

“Not yet.” He slid up her body, hands all over her, gently but still roaming, finding sensitive spots, and he kissed her again. She could feel and taste her own wetness on him, it was sexy as hell, and after a few minutes, her body had calmed enough she could even consider anything else he might have in mind. Her hands slid over him, nails scratching lightly down his back in that way she knew he loved, then caressing him over the satin briefs he was still wearing. He was stretching the hell out of them at the front, and he cursed half under his breath when her hands rubbed his erection through the material. She always liked the feel of his dick in her hand, but the added satin sensation was also really hot. What she really wanted though required taking them off, so she peeled and pushed them off him, down his thighs, which he seemed happy enough to help with.

“They are so hot on you,” Sylvie whispered into his ear, or close enough anyway, as he nibbled on her neck, “but I need you in me now, Matt. Please.”

“Haven’t had enough yet?” He asked with a grin.

“Please. Please, I need you.” Her body rutted against him, god, she felt empty, she needed him inside her, needed to be filled with him. She could feel his hard dick sliding along her incredibly wet pussy, and as the head hit her clit she felt those little electrical bursts again, but they were back to feeling good, not good enough, but enough to keep moving her hips like that, chasing the feeling it promised. She couldn’t help the mewling sound when he moved, taking his cock from her, replacing the slide of it with the push in of two fingers. She was sloppy wet, she could feel it, and grabbed the back of his neck, kissing him as hard as she could before pulling back to demand, “fuck me, now, I’m so wet, don’t worry about fingers, just stretch me open on that cock, just fuck me, Matt, fuck me now.”

“Fuck, Syl.” He gasped, but at least he followed direction, lining up his cock and pushing into her, still slower than she’d like, and she pushed up onto him as hard as she could. It hurt and felt fantastic, firing so many nerve endings, and she wrapped her arms around him, grabbing his ass to encourage him to fuck her hard and deep and fast, because tonight, that was what she needed. She wanted to feel every bit of his strength and his masculinity and the delicious surrender of him taking her. She buried her face in the spot where his shoulder met his neck, and she chanted his name like a mantra, nothing else mattered, no other word came to mind, just him, taking over her every sense, and she was on top of the waves of orgasm again, somehow, and he kept her there for what felt like forever, his dick pounding into her and his fingers on her clit, and all she could feel was him taking her, all she could see was his shoulder and the juncture of his neck as she tried to bring their bodies as close together as possible, all she could hear was his heavy breathing and his soft mantra of her name which had never sounded better than it did when he said it like that, all she could smell was him, that Matt musk wood scent and suddenly, her whole body convulsed in something somewhere beyond an orgasm. She knew nothing but waves of insane pleasure for what felt like forever, and she grabbed onto Matt with arms, legs, everything she had because she felt like she was going to fall off the earth without him. She heard a sharp low yell from him, knew he was coming too.

Her brain came back online a few minutes later. He was softening inside her, and once she met his beautiful blue eyes, he kissed her softly and slipped out. God, she felt so wet down there, she was sure she’d never been that wet, and she was grateful she had the “master” bedroom with its own bathroom because she did not want to have to go out into the hall to clean up. Getting out of the bed, getting farther than six inches from Matt, that alone seemed too hard right now. She felt the bed shift though, as Matt sat up, and she knew she should get up, too, but,

“I love this feeling.” She confessed. “I’ve never really liked it before, but with you, with it being us, I love feeling like I’m dripping with us, fucked open and dripping with _you_.”

“Fuck, Sylvie.” Matt groaned, his back now to her, and his head dropped slightly, as if he was looking at his junk. “Don’t even think about it.”  
“What? Don’t even think about what?”  
“No, I meant…” He looked a little chagrined that she’d overheard his muttered comment.

“You talk to your penis?” She couldn’t help giggling a little. “What isn’t it supposed to be thinking about?”  
“You realize what you just said is the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever heard in my life?”  
“About how fucked open I feel, dripping with your cum?”  
“Fuck, yes, that.” Matt groaned, his back arching a little like she’d actually caused him physical pleasure with her words. Maybe she had, the brain was a powerful kind of mysterious thing.

“That’s a bad thing?”  
“My dick might be interested in round 2 right away, but my heart-rate and the brain in the head on top of my neck is telling me I’m not 20 years old anymore – I think I may have had a small stroke, shit, Sylvie, the things you do to me.”  
“Me? Matt, I thought I was dying. I mean, a great death, no better death could occur than being fucked to death by you and your big dick-“  
“You’re gonna kill me tonight, I swear.”  
“I’m just saying.” She held up her hands in mock surrender. “It was mutual near-death then. Definitely worth the cost of the new underwear, huh?”  
“They’re not awful.” Matt allowed, turning to smile at her. “I’m going back to my usual stuff tomorrow, you know that right?”  
“Yep. Those are just for special occasions. I like you just as you are, Matt, complete with boring cotton boxer-briefs in black or gray or if you’re feeling very rebellious, blue. It’s perfectly you and you are perfect just as you.”  
“I love you.” Matt said it so genuinely, so solemnly, that she had to meet his eyes, ready to respond with equal seriousness, when she realized something.  
“You’re bleeding.”  
“Huh?”  
“Oh my god, Matt.” She felt herself blush, reaching out to touch his shoulder. “I bit you so hard I broke skin, I am so so so sorry. We need to clean that out, bites are so prone to infection, come on.” She rolled from the bed, tugging at his nearest hand so he’d follow her into the bathroom. He grinned, looking into the mirror at the bite mark she had left. It was going to be a massive bruise and mark tomorrow, it was so embarrassing; she hadn’t left marks like that since she was an inexperienced teenager. Thank God it was on his shoulder, a bit away from his neck, it wouldn’t show with a shirt on. “I’m so sorry.”  
“Don’t be sorry.” He pulled her into a warm embrace, and kissed her softly when she turned her face up towards him. “I don’t mind.”  
“I bit you.”  
“On the other hand, I made you come so hard you lost control and bit me that hard.” He was grinning, looking pretty proud of himself actually. He kissed her on the tip of her nose. “It won’t show, Sylvie, don’t worry about it. Feels like you’re marking your territory and I like being your territory.”  
“You do, huh?”  
“Love it.” He confirmed with a smile.

“Well, it still needs cleaning and a bandage, it’s an open wound. And much as I loved the feeling, now, first, I have got to freshen up a bit down there.”  
“How about a quick shower?” Matt suggested. “Clean us both up.”  
“Showering together is rarely quick and I thought you were just worried about round 2 resulting in death – a very pleasurable death, granted, but-“ He cut her off with another kiss. God, he was good at kissing. That was hardly a new revelation for her, but it was like a continual one, just daily reminders that he was good at this. He was fucking fantastic at it. Right now it was just a nice deep ‘I love you so much’ kiss, not an ‘I want to fuck you right now’ kiss.

“Just a shower.” He promised as he pulled back several moments later. “He might think he can rise to the occasion, but my brain is saying he and I are both down for the count for tonight. Like I said, I’m not twenty anymore.”  
“Yeah, I don’t think a 20-year-old could’ve done what you just did to me, so I wouldn’t want you any other way than you are right now.” She kissed him quickly again. “Shower, then a bandage for that, and then sleep. You wore me out, Matt.”


	7. I Can't Promise That

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Discussion of previously accomplished nonconsensual dissemination of nude pictures of a character. 
> 
> Note on Sylvie's parents: I know they're a little back-and-forth or inconsistent in this chapter, I tried to write them as closely as I could to how I think my own parents would react in this situation (my best and most convenient model for 60-something Midwestern parents). People and their reactions don't always behave in logical or linear ways.

Matt left for shift just after seven the next morning, so it wasn’t like she got to sleep in even if she had taken the day off. She’d heard his alarm go off, but mostly rolled over to doze off again until he came into the room to say he was heading for the firehouse. He sat on the side of the bed nearest her, and she sat up enough to kiss him goodbye. He was already in his uniform, and she was struck by a version of a sort of ongoing fantasy of hers that mostly focused on mussing up that perfectly together Captain Casey look, particularly his hair which was always much cuter after her fingers had run through it and it was fluffier and sort of everywhere. She kissed him, more heavily than a simply goodbye kiss for sure, but not like she really wanted to lead to anything, just wanted to really kiss him, and then she could feel him grinning against her mouth as he reached up to grab her wrist.

“I just did that, don’t mess it up.” He said as he pulled away from the kiss.

“You look much cuter with your hair messy.” She pointed out.

“Good thing I’m not going for ‘cuter’ at work then isn’t it?”

“Fine.” She capitulated easily, but put on a slight pout just to tease him. “But you owe me a day of messy hair and that sexy scruffy didn’t-shave-this-morning look, since I’m not getting it for my birthday.”

“I thought you liked watching me shave.”  
“Watching you shave, yes. I also like you kind of scruffy, it’s sexy.” She paused, then kissed him quickly again. “You’re just too sexy in general. But you have to go to work, and I need to get up and get ready for my parents’ visit.”  
“Are you bringing them by the house today?”  
“You mean the firehouse? This afternoon, yeah. We’ll go to dinner tonight and then you can join us tomorrow to show them the new house and we’ll have the day together before they have to go back to Fowlerton the next morning.”  
“Have a good day, hopefully I’ll see you this afternoon at the house.” He kissed her softly once more. Morning goodbyes could be a little drawn out, but she didn’t mind the ‘extra’ affection. She tried not to worry about him going to shift without her. She knew he was fine, he’d be at 51 with everyone else, and Kelly was there so it wasn’t like there wasn’t someone there to keep an eye on Matt, and Foster would make sure he was taken care of if he did get hurt, she just didn’t really like letting him out of her sight. Maybe she was more affected by the mess at 29 than she’d thought.

After a somewhat late lunch with her parents, she took them by the firehouse. They’d visited Chicago before, but had never actually come by her place of work. She thought it would be a nice chance for them to meet her coworkers, they’d heard stories of course but had only met Matt, Cruz, and Otis. It was pushing 2 o’clock when they got to the house, but she was happy to see all the vehicles in the bay as they walked up.

“This is a newer building than I expected in Chicago, Sylvie.” Mom remarked.

“This whole area was rebuilt as UIC expanded and they tore out the old housing projects, so it’s much newer than some other firehouses.” Sylvie explained. “There’s always been a firehouse in this neighborhood, it’s just this building that’s new.”

“That is your ambulance?”

“Yeah, that’s 61.”  
“Whose name is this on it?” Dad pointed to the gold lettering along the door.  
“Leslie Shay.” Sylvie would’ve liked to gloss over it but figured honesty was probably best. Just sort of limited honesty. “She died while she was working here and just like a firefighter, they put her name on her ambo. I took over for her, or her spot, whatever you want to call it.”  
“So which one is the truck and the engine and the squad, you called it?” Mom asked, looking between the massive red-and-black apparatuses. Sylvie quickly pointed out the squad and engine, then turned to the nearest vehicle, which happened to be 81.

“This is Matt’s truck, Truck 81. You can tell it’s a truck not an engine because of the aerial ladder, at least, that’s the easiest way. Let’s go inside, I’ll introduce you to everyone and you can get a tour of the house.”

She took her parents inside, and it was easy to catch almost everyone, since a late lunch had just been served up here so most everyone was in the common room. Everyone was great, of course, happy to meet her parents and tell entertaining but safe stories about Sylvie’s adventures as a Chicago paramedic. She was grateful they steered clear of the more dangerous calls, even if it that might make her job seem more dramatic or heroic – she knew her parents were more interested in safe than in heroic. They already thought just being a medic at all was noble enough, they didn’t need any dramatic rescues or dangerous calls to make them more proud.

“If you’re looking for Casey, you’re gonna hafta give him a minute.” Herrmann said, apparently noticing her looking around after a good fifteen minutes without seeing Matt. “He hit the showers just before you got here – had a pretty serious fire call this morning.”  
“Is everyone okay?”  
“Yeah – got all the residents out just fine, just real thick smoke. Got a bit of a shower during overhaul – some ceiling came down, covered him in crud.”  
“ _Casey_ ’s a gentleman.” Kidd shot a look at Otis and Mouch. “These guys raced for the showers, but Casey let me go next, so he’s just finishing up now. He’s fine, though.”  
“We really should probably get going, Sylvie, if we want to have any time at all at the aquarium.”  
“I just want to say ‘hi’ to Matt really quick.”  
“I’ll go let him know you’re here, make sure he’s not finished up and doing paperwork.” Kelly volunteered, and she smiled at him.

“That’s fine, I’ll just show my parents the bunk room real quick, if he’s in his quarters we’ll see him.”  
He wasn’t in his quarters, but she did at least get to show her parents the sleeping arrangements in the house. They didn’t look all that impressed, though she’d told them many times that there was no special divided off area for the women from the men. She and Foster shared a little two-bunk cubby, and Kidd was across the way, but they were in amongst the guys, not that there had ever been any sort of problem. They all slept fully dressed because the bells could go off at any second. Plus, none of the officers at 51 would ever allow anything to happen that made someone uncomfortable. Well, there was Mouch’s snoring, but that wasn’t really preventable and it wasn’t like a guy-girl uncomfortable, it was just something you had to learn to sleep through, or get earplugs for. They were just heading out when Matt came in to the bunk room, obviously headed for his quarters. His hair was still wet, clearly fresh from the shower.  
“Sorry, Severide said you were here – I was a little late getting into the showers after that last call. Believe me, you did not want to smell me after that one – ended up with a little shower of soot, debris, and the water that had saturated that ceiling.”  
“Drop ceiling?”  
“Yep.”  
“Those ceiling tiles smell the worst when they burn.” Sylvie nodded knowingly. She hugged him, and offered a very quick and appropriate hello kiss. “I was just finishing up the tour with Mom and Dad. We’re going to head for the Shedd in a minute – Mom loves the penguins.”  
“Ah, the penguins are my favorite, too.” Matt grinned, turning his attention to Mom and Dad.

“Mrs. Brett, Mr. Brett, good to see you again.” He held his hand out to Dad, who took it, but there was an odd pause to it that Sylvie thought was, well, odd. “Are you a Magellanic or Rockhopper fan, Mrs. Brett?”  
“Oh,” Mom looked completely thrown by Matt addressing her. She also was not, Sylvie noticed quickly, really looking anywhere even in the general proximity of Matt’s actual person. “I just like the penguins, I don’t care which kind.”  
“Always liked the Magellanic better myself, no idea why.” Matt’s smile was a little strained now. “You guys should go, the Shedd closes at 5.”

“Be careful, we’ll see you tomorrow.” She leaned up and kissed him softly again. Neither Mom nor Dad said goodbye to him, though Dad did at least manage to look in Matt’s general direction. Mom was still kind of pointedly looking away from him. She would talk to them tonight, after dinner, about whatever the hell it was that was making them weird.

“You were pretty rude to Matt earlier.” Sylvie kept her tone even, not wanting to be accusatory or anything. Her birthday had been really great, except for that weird few minutes with Matt at the firehouse.

“You can’t really blame us, honey, not after what happened. That stuff he put on that website that your mother has – Facebook or whatever it is, whether he put it there or a really pissed off ex-fling put it there.” Dad pointed out. “It’s not the sort of behavior that impresses your parents.”  
“Matt didn’t post that.” Sylvie pointed out a little sharply. “I’ve told you guys that, I’ve told Allison that, I’ve told everyone that.”  
“And I’m sure it’s what he told you-“  
“Matt hates social media. He doesn’t use any of it. Ever. It was a whole – I’ve told you guys all about this.” Sylvie sighed.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t look at him the same now. I mean, I have literally seen him naked now, it’s hard to…Sylvie, are you sure about him?” Mom asked.  
“Matt is an amazing guy, yes, I’m sure.” Sylvie was fully defensive now. “He was the victim of a crime, a really invasive, awful, crime and no one feels worse about it than he does-“  
“He should, no one wants to see that, and I don’t know why he’d take the pictures to begin with if he didn’t intend to share them, at least with you, and that’s not something I really wanted to know either, that he sends things like that to you.”  
“He doesn’t.” Sylvie insisted. “He didn’t know, well, he knew about one of them, but that was different, he thought it was deleted, the others he didn’t even know about. Some are even photoshopped, they’re not entirely him. His face but not...him.”  
“I’m sure that’s what he’s told you, but I heard he was running around with some other woman, that’s who took those photos, some woman he was sleeping with up at that other house he was working at, and-“  
“Who told you that?”  
“Hope heard it from-“  
“Hope? Hope hates Matt.” Sylvie shook her head. “Matt is the one who figured out she’d faked some paperwork at the firehouse, put down a chief’s name on some forms, anyway, he’s the one who got her fired. Well, she got herself fired, but he’s the one who caught her. She’d say anything mean about him, and I don’t know how she’d even hear about anything-“  
“She knew he was working at another firehouse, she must know people up here still.”  
“You’re going to believe Hope over me?”  
“Not exactly.” Dad hedged. “We just think maybe she’s not as…confused about what’s really going on as you might be. You really like this guy, she’s more clear-eyed, that’s all.”  
“Clear-eyed? She just wants any chance to gossip and make me look bad.”  
“And I googled him, honey. He’s so unreliable, you don’t want to get too serious about him – he doesn’t stick with anything, he’s had several addresses on the white pages, and his marriage was so short, and he was an alderman but just for a little while. Then there’s the whole issue of his family.”  
“Mom-“  
“I know you told us part of it, but have you looked up the old newspaper articles about it? They said he was complicit in his father’s murder, that he helped his mother get into his father’s house so she could murder him, honey-“  
“That isn’t what happened.”  
“What did he tell you happened?”  
“He doesn’t…he doesn’t talk about it. But I know Matt, he wouldn’t have done anything like that.”  
“He’s very handsome, and seems very charming, dear, and I’m sure it’s been very effective with lots of women in his life, but we worry about you-“ Mom started again.  
“You liked him at Christmas.”  
“Like I said, he’s very charming.”  
“But you think I shouldn’t be with him anymore.”  
“We’re not telling you how to live your life, honey.” Dad hedged again.

“But we don’t like him, and if you insist on dating him, well, I just…I’m not comfortable with being around him, Sylvie. I don’t want him to come to Fowlerton again. I can’t say anything, I suppose, about what you do in Chicago, but in our home, he’s not welcome.”  
“So, I guess that means no Easter, even if I got time off.” Sylvie sighed heavily. “What are you going to do tomorrow? Stay at your hotel and refuse to do what I’d planned because Matt is supposed to join us?”  
“I’d rather not see him, but if you insist…”  
“We’re not making you choose.” Dad held up a hand. “We just think it’s best if he doesn’t come to Fowlerton. Besides, after the furor those pictures stirred up, I don’t think he wants to come to Fowlerton for a while, honey. It’ll just be awkward, and no one wants that sort of gossip and awkwardness at Easter services.”

“I can’t believe you guys are…he was a _victim_. He didn’t do anything wrong.”  
“People who didn’t do anything wrong, don’t get photos like that of them posted on the internet, Sylvie.”  
“That’s not at all true, it’s called revenge porn, Mom-“  
“Revenge for what? He did something to some girl, after he’d sent her those or let her take them, and-“  
“No matter what he did, no one would deserve that sort of public humiliation.” Sylvie was absolutely certain of that. “And what he did was refuse to sleep with his temporary boss at that other firehouse. That’s it. That’s his big ‘crime’ Mom.”  
“I just can’t unsee his mostly erect penis-“  
“He wasn’t…”  
“It certainly was-“  
“Trust me, it wasn’t.” Sylvie shook her head. Matt had been started on getting hard in one of the photos, but he was not particularly close to the size of his actually fully erect dick. She didn’t think those details would help at all here. “And okay, that’s kind of awkward, for him too, but you have to give him a chance, a fair chance. He didn’t do anything wrong, Mom, Dad.”  
“We’ll…see him tomorrow.” Mom allowed. “I can’t promise to be able to make eye contact, I just can’t promise that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Either interest in the fic has waned, or the holiday (even housebound) has slowed traffic to it, but for those still reading and interested in the progress: there's two chapters left for me to write for this story. I plan to continue to post one chapter (or so) a day until it's all up. This story will likely end up around 50,000 words, I think. Inspiration for a part three comes from my readers, so if you're still reading, I'll probably keep writing and posting. 
> 
> Constructive criticism welcome, but please don't just post something about how I've gotten the characters all wrong or you hate the story - that's not constructive because it isn't substantive. Criticism must be specific and substantive to be constructive (ie helpful). If you don't like my story, that's fine, that's why there's a back key, and LOTS of options on this site. Find what you like.


	8. In the Wrong Order

Matt called her the next morning at 8:02 am. He sounded like he was exhausted. Sometimes, she wished he was more the type to video call, that way she could at least see him, instead of hearing his voice and imagining what might be wrong. He begged off meeting them for breakfast and doing the Field Museum with them. Matt loved the Field Museum. He was like a little kid with the dinosaurs and she’d heard from Herrmann that he’d once taken a little too much joy in telling Herrmann’s kids about the man-eating lions of Shavo. Herrmann hadn’t been complaining at all – he was just too grateful that Matt had taken Luke, Max, Annabelle and Kenny out for a day. She knew he’d been kind of excited to take her parents through his favorite parts. So, while she’d waited for her parents on a coffee break in the museum that morning, she called her informant, just to make sure Matt hadn’t become a great voice actor and wasn’t begging off because her parents had been rude yesterday.

“Hey, Kelly.”  
“Hey, Brett, I thought your parents were still in town.”  
“Yeah, we’re at the Field Museum, they’re getting some coffee and a snack. I just was wondering, Matt sounded really tired, and-“  
“Some guys from PD stopped by just before dinner yesterday, they had a meeting in the blue office – had 81 out of service for like 45 minutes. No one asked, we figured it was about, you know.” She could actually hear him pause to shrug. She really was getting to know Kelly Severide too well. “Truck had four calls last night, I don’t think he slept at all. Squad didn’t get called out to the last two so I’m not sure, I don’t think anything was bad, he was just dead on his feet. He’s sleeping now, or at least, he’s in his room.”

“Okay, I just wanted to make sure.”  
“Said he was going over to the house this afternoon, meet you there then be at Molly’s.”  
“We’re supposed to go to dinner with my parents.”

“Hey, maybe I misunderstood him. I’ll tell him to call you when he gets up. He’ll grab a few hours and be working at the house by noon or so.”

“Thanks, Kelly.”  
“No problem. Enjoy the day with your folks.”

The museum had been great, and if it wasn’t March and still rather cold, they might’ve taken some time to walk the museum campus. Instead, they grabbed lunch and went to Navy Pier. It was better in the summer, but there were plenty of things to do inside and Dad loved the ‘sensory maze’. Sylvie thought it best not to mention that Matt loved it, too (though the atomic rush or whatever they called it where he got to chase a color through was probably meant for like 8 year-olds but he and Kelly had gotten insanely competitive about it). Matt hadn’t called, but he had texted at least to let her know he was heading to the house to get some work done. So, at three o’clock, she herded her parents back to her car with promises that she had a surprise she wanted to show them. She had to withstand some questions on the drive up to Bucktown, and the fact that the house was so close to Molly’s actually worked to maintain the surprise for a few more minutes.

“Oh, this is that place you talk about, the one that your coworkers own, right?” Mom asked, looking pleased to have been brought to another place she mentioned so often. Her parents had been to Chicago several times since Sylvie moved up, but there was always other things to do or go see, and Molly’s had never really made it onto the list of must-show-the-parents.

“Yeah, that’s Molly’s. But I wanted to show you something else first. We have to walk down the block a little.” She pointed up Winchester, directing her parents towards the house. She stopped outside 1842, earning an odd look from her parents.

“So, this is the surprise.” Now that it came to it, she wasn’t entirely sure how to say this. Oh, well, it’s not like it needed sugar-coating or anything. “This is my new house.”  
“You bought a house?” Dad looked surprised but also quite excited. “You didn’t tell us you were even looking to buy – can you afford a house this big, Sylvie?”  
“Well, I didn’t buy it. Matt did, technically. But it’s ours, both our names are on it. He bought it for us.”  
“You’ve only been dating since the fall.” Mom pointed out a little sharply. “You’re not even engaged. He’s buying a house?”  
“He used to own a condo, but after the fire, he decided to take his settlement and buy this place. It’s a great neighborhood for families, good schools, and of course, yes, our friends from work are at Molly’s a lot.”  
“Trust an Irishman to buy a house this close to his favorite bar.” Dad scoffed, but he didn’t actually look like he meant it as a real insult, just sort of a joke. “You’re sure about this, honey? This is…having a house together is a big deal. You’re legally tied to him in some ways now.”  
“Come inside, see it. Matt’s working on it, like I said it’s a great neighborhood so he got a fixer-upper because that was pretty much the only way to make it affordable for a firefighter and a paramedic.” She ushered them through the gate in the fence, which was still way too modern for this house; she didn’t like it at all but that would be a change for late in the project, and she unlocked the front door, knowing Matt would’ve come in the back. She couldn’t hear him working, but she knew he was here. The house itself was in a state of obvious renovation. It was down to the subflooring in the front room but to her, she could picture it perfectly as their house, once it was done.

“So this is obviously the living room – we put in new windows, and we’re putting hardwood floor back in – Matt wants to try to get period-appropriate colors and materials. I think he’s still annoyed someone pulled out Victorian-era hardwood floors to begin with.” She explained happily. This whole house made her happy. Just being here made her happy. She turned over her shoulder to call out, “Matt, I’m here with Mom and Dad!” Then she turned back to her parents, “Matt finished the basement first, he’s really just starting work here on the first floor. I think he’s in the kitchen today.”  
“Hey, babe, sorry I’m a little…” Matt appeared from the bathroom actually, clearly apologizing for the fact that he was a bit dusty and dirty. She was used to it, it was the standard ‘contractor Matt’ look, a mix of project detritus and loose-fitting jeans and a slightly tight t-shirt. She leaned in to kiss him softly.

“What’s the project for today? I brought Mom and Dad by to show them our new place.” He’d known she was going to do it, she didn’t need to explain, but she felt the need to emphasize the _our_ new place with Mom especially right now.

“I just finished laying the tile in the bathroom actually. I’ll have to grout tomorrow, then the vanity can go in next week – the new toilet won’t be in for another week, though.” Matt smiled warmly at her. “The kitchen flooring is down, grouted, cleaned, you can go see it. Cabinets are in, no countertops yet.”

“Oh, Mom, you have to see this kitchen.” Sylvie practically dragged her mom into the kitchen, ready to show off the new white cabinets and the granite floor tiles. Matt had told her not to worry about the cost (she was still a little annoyed about how little he was talking money with her, but he _had_ shot her down on some of her most expensive ideas, so at least she knew he had been honest when he’d said he’d tell her if she dreamed too big) and she knew they were saving a lot of money because he was doing all the labor he could himself. Even only half-done, the kitchen was so much brighter with the white cabinets and the lighter flooring.

“Isn’t it beautiful? The whole back deck is going to be replaced, right Matt?”

“Yeah, Paul and his crew will build what we designed – it’s too big for me to do by myself. They can’t fit us in until May, not with the work we want anyway.” Matt confirmed, having followed them into the kitchen. He’d explained to her that bringing in subcontractors sped up the process a lot, plus, he wasn’t an electrician or a plumber, but even some of the windows, flooring and stuff that he could do, he was hiring out because it was faster.

“It’s going to be much brighter in here, because the deck upstairs will just be a little Juliet balcony. We’ve picked out granite countertops, too. We still have to choose appliances.” Sylvie looked at Matt. “Can I take them downstairs?”  
“Yeah, the floor’s clear. I’m going to clean up in the bathroom, I figure you want me presentable for dinner so I brought some clothes to change into – I’ll, uh, run upstairs and do that, too.”  
“So, downstairs used to be an apartment that could be rented out. This was all blocked off. We re-opened it so we can use this space.” Sylvie explained as they went downstairs, ending up in what used to the apartments living room, what she was now mentally calling the family room. This floor was finished and furnished now, and she loved it. “Matt installed radiant heating in the floors, beneath the tile. I picked tile because I was worried about wood in a basement, just in case there’s ever any water issues, you know? It looks like wood, but it’s tile. And I picked out the furniture, except the TV, Matt picked that because he’s such a boy. This is just the utility stuff, and this is the bath.” She opened the door, showing off the amazing work (in her opinion) that Matt had done. It was tiled in a beautiful mix of whites and light blues that really brightened a basement-level entirely enclosed space. She kept them moving, “and there’s a small bedroom here with a window into the backyard which will let in more light once the new deck is on, but it still won’t be a lot because we will still have a deck. And this is the kitchen. It’s not big, but we expect to use this for guests, we’re not going to rent it.”  
“Guests?” Dad asked, eyebrows raised.  
“I hope you like it.” Sylvie admitted softly. “We hope this is where you guys will stay when you visit in the future. You’ll have some space to yourselves, so even if you want to stay longer than a weekend, it won’t feel crowded.”

“Matt built this?” Mom looked around, the finished space was quite a bit more impressive than the half-done parts upstairs. The materials weren’t as high-end, this was not an entertaining space after all.

“Well, he didn’t build the house, he’d point that out right away. He did all the finish work, though, took it down to the studs. I helped a lot, I did the painting for instance, and the window treatments, but most of it is Matt’s work.”  
“He’s doing all this work…but he hasn’t given you a ring yet?”  
“I thought you didn’t like him anymore.” Sylvie had hoped Mom would start to think about Matt differently, but this felt a little too quick.

“I’m not certain about him, and while this is very nice, I’m not sure I understand the order you two are doing things.”

“It’s not 1970 anymore, Cathy.” Dad tried. Sylvie could tell he was on her side about Matt now. Dad would like the idea that Matt could and would buy her a house. It was a big gesture, but it spoke of certain intentions and Dad would definitely care about the means it spoke of as well. Matt might be ‘just a firefighter’ but he was far from barely getting by. Dad had always worried about her finances once she moved to Chicago. Plus, Dad might say it’s not 1970 anymore, but he liked a man who would be the ‘provider’.   
“I know that. I just don’t like this impermanence. And I’m still not certain I trust him. He’s very charming, and he certainly knows how to…go big on his wooing.” Mom gestured around.

“Let’s go upstairs, pick up Matt, and go to dinner. I can tell you all about the rest of our plans for the house over dinner – Mom, you have to help me do some of the furniture shopping next time you visit. I love Matt, but his taste in furniture is…not always great.”  
“Well, he’s a man sweetheart, and apparently a straight man, so building things, that’s his bailiwick. Decorating things, that’s more the lady’s department.”  
“That is very sexist.” Dad pointed out, but he was smiling. “How many bedrooms upstairs, Sylvie?”  
“Three and two baths – the master is at the back of the house and the two smaller bedrooms face the street.”  
“Three bedrooms upstairs, huh?” Dad asked with a knowing tone. Sylvie couldn’t help laughing. Dad was definitely on her side about Matt now. She knew exactly where he was going.

“Not yet, Dad. In the future. Maybe. We don’t want to do _everything_ in the ‘wrong order’ right Mom?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know it cuts off suddenly. I was going for a certain effect. No, there will not be any more with Sylvie's parents (directly) in this story. Resolution takes time, guys. 
> 
> Chapter Fifteen is kicking my butt; it is proving difficult to write! Thanks for all the comments, I really do appreciate them (and the kudos).


	9. An Anchor to Tie You Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally finished the draft of what was supposed to be chapter fifteen, and became chapters fifteen and sixteen, so here's an earlier-than-usual installment today. I'm only about 300 words into the last chapter. I'm excited to get to those bits!

She didn’t go home for Easter, which she was easily able to explain because of the way work scheduling fell. It also meant she didn’t have to tell Matt he’d been disinvited from her parents’ house (at least for now). Dinner had gone well enough, mostly because they’d talked about the house the whole time, and Mom had been subtle (Sylvie hoped – Matt hadn’t said anything) in her inability to quite look at Matt for more than a quick glance. She didn’t want to ‘push’ either Matt or Mom into interacting too much right now: she knew he still felt incredibly exposed and she couldn’t imagine trying to talk to his mother if she knew Nancy had seen naked pictures of her. Plus, they were just really busy, so not taking time to go out to Fowlerton didn’t really need to be explained.

Overtime for Matt and prepping for the wedding for her meant that progress on the house had slowed, but she wasn’t in that big a hurry. She was, sort of, of course because she wanted to live with Matt, but she was going to miss living with Otis and Cruz, too. Especially since Cruz was moving out. So that meant Otis was now looking for a new place, or two new roommates, because she was probably by summer going to be living with Matt. The bachelor party was relatively tame, apparently no one really wanted to relive Mouch’s (except Matt, who complained a little that he hadn’t been able to make Mouch’s) and so was Chloe’s bachelorette. The most raucous that had gotten was a pretty drunken debate about which of the guys from 51 was the most handsome. Since half of them were dating one of the guys from 51, it had fallen to Chloe’s friends to decide: Kelly had won (Stella kinda preened) but Sylvie was okay with Matt coming second (Chloe’s friend Lauren had rightly nominated Matt for ‘best ass’, so he’d beaten Kelly in that qualifier anyway).

She paid careful attention in the rehearsal, because the wedding was a full Catholic mass, so she wanted to not mess it up. She also noted with happy surprise that they’d been arranged so that Matt was her escort out of the church. She wasn’t worried for herself, but she was just more comfortable with her being on Matt’s arm is all. There was already going too be at least one awkward bit to Cruz’s wedding – Gabby was going to be there. That meant inevitably Gabby would find out about her and Matt. She wanted to be the one to tell her, but she hadn’t called her just to tell her that and Gabby didn’t call from Puerto Rico. She called Herrmann sometimes apparently, but she never called the two people she’d claimed to love the most: Sylvie and Matt. As far as Sylvie knew, even the divorce had been handled without so much as phone conversations, just emails between the two. She wasn’t sure, because Matt didn’t talk about it, but she’d gathered that Matt had been hurt that Gabby literally wanted nothing. She didn’t even take any photos of him or them. She’d taken clothes, and sent Antonio and then her mother by for some other sentimental things she’d owned before they moved in together, but nothing of her time with Matt had ‘made the cut’ of things she wanted to keep. Of course, Matt’s things had all been destroyed, so at least they were equal in that regard now. So, yeah, how did you explain to your ex-best friend that you were pretty much living with and definitely totally in love with her ex-husband? She and Matt had hoped to be able to find a time to tell her privately. It turned out, when Gabby showed up at Molly’s after the rehearsal, where everyone had gone for a couple drinks, that there really wasn’t a good way to break that news. Gabby walking up to them just as she and Matt were kissing was definitely not a good way, though.

“Casey? _Brett_?” Gabby looked shocked. Which, okay, yes, that was fair enough.  
“At least we don’t have to find a way to bring it up.” Matt said aloud, and in a synchronous move the Rockettes would be proud of, everyone else from 51 moved away from their table at once.

“You two are…what, dating now?”  
“Yes, we are.” Sylvie replied firmly.

“You’re dating my husband?”  
“ _Ex-_ husband.” Matt corrected loudly. “You sent me divorce papers over a year and a half ago, Gabby.”  
“You moved on quickly. You just have a thing for the paramedics at the firehouse, huh?”  
“Yeah, that’s it.” Matt’s sarcasm might not be helping.

“And Brett, I thought you had better taste than that.”  
“Better taste?” Sylvie didn’t even know what that meant. Like better manners than to go after a friend’s ex-husband, well, an ex-friend’s ex-husband, because Gabby never called, never even said goodbye, so not really much of a friend at this point?

“Can we take this outside?” Matt asked, gesturing to the side door of Molly’s. “We’re putting on a show here.”  
“Looks like you two were perfectly content to make a show of it a few minutes ago. Guess this explains that whole _annulment_ proceeding you insisted on so you could pretend it’s like we were never married. Now you can move right on to your ex-wife’s best friend.” Gabby was practically shouting at this point. “But that’s par for the course for you, isn’t it Casey? You were sleeping with Darden’s widow six months after we buried him and he was supposed to be your best friend, so I should’ve seen it coming, huh?!”

“Gabby-“  
“Then there was the time you fucked around with a battalion chief’s barely-ex-wife, and let’s not forget that you once fucked the mother of one of your teammates-“  
“Gabby!” Matt grabbed her arm, clearly aiming to take her outside, and before Sylvie could even register it, Matt was shaking off a pretty solid right hook.

“Hey, back off!” Sylvie shoved between them now, because well, because she just did. She hoped Gabby didn’t hit her, too.

“I can’t believe you didn’t even tell me!” Gabby protested, and it wasn’t clear if she was still talking to Matt or she was talking to Sylvie at this point. “Just be careful Brett, he pretends to be this perfect good guy, he says he loves you just like you are, then he decides you’re not good enough the way you are and he has to try to change you, and make you better, and all the things he used to love about you now just aren’t acceptable and then it’s the ultimatums and if you don’t do what he wants, he makes it all _your_ fault.”  
“Yeah, of course, _that_ ’s what happened.” Matt’s sarcasm really didn’t help.

“You couldn’t stand that you couldn’t _control_ me, that I wouldn’t be _dependent_ on you for everything – let you be the ‘big man’ and pay for everything and ‘take care of’ me and make decisions for me! You’re just like your father after all!” So at this point, the entire bar was staring at them. Sylvie didn’t know how to make this better, she could see Matt just there was something in his eyes and Matt was running, internally he was running behind any wall he had ever had his heart behind, and Sylvie turned to him because Gabby might have been her ex-best-friend and Gabby might even be the aggressor right now, but she was terrified to lose Matt into wherever he was retreating right now as his shoulders squared and he stiffened and his warm blue eyes went not cold but dead. “You’re welcome to him, Sylvie – you can deal with his controlling, needy, pathetic, moody bullshit. I hope you need a good anchor in your life because that’s what he is – an anchor to tie you down and drag you down.” Gabby spat, but at least then she turned and left through the front door. Matt stood completely still long enough for Sylvie to get to his side, to see Kelly moving towards them and the rest of 51 trying to make a discreet human wall around them, to allow them at least a modicum of delayed privacy.

“Matt, are you okay?” She looked at his cheek, struck suddenly by the really superficial hope that it wouldn’t bruise too badly, with Joe’s wedding in a couple days. Matt nodded sharply, but didn’t say anything. This close, she could see and feel how tense he was, like every muscle and nerve was on alert and he was just so very barely reining himself in. He shut his eyes for a second, and when they opened again they at least weren’t dead anymore, which was only slightly better because now she could see how angry he was and frankly it scared her. She’d always heard half-jokes about Matt’s temper around the house, but he was so rarely angry and always dealt with it in pretty healthy ways, at least in her experience, and okay, if you were going to be livid, this was probably an understandable time, but she didn’t know what to do right now. Kelly appeared at her shoulder, subtly taking her place directly in front of Matt.

“Hey, Casey, come on, man.” Kelly tried, then put his right hand on Matt’s left shoulder firmly – not a holding grip just connection. “Matt, hey, meet my eyes, buddy, come on. That’s it. You with me?” Matt nodded sharply. Kelly just raised his eyebrows and asked again, “you with me, Matt?”  
“Yeah, I’m with you.” Matt’s voice was lower, gravelly, in a way she wasn’t used to. Kelly’s gaze never left Matt’s, not for even a blink.

“Good, we’re gonna go outside, you and me. Just you and me. Let’s go.”  
“Kelly-“ Sylvie started to ask what he was doing, but Kelly just held up his hand to cut her off. Kidd held onto her arm, while Kelly pretty much walked Matt outside. God, had it really only been a few minutes since she’d been so happy, looking forward to Joe’s wedding and oh, crap, she turned to face Cruz, who looked as…confused and angry and also sort of sorry about something. She was sorry, and she knew Matt would be incredibly sorry, to have made a scene when they were out celebrating him and Chloe, “Joe, I am so sorry, that was not what I thought, we were going to tell her, but we didn’t know she was coming tonight.”  
“I asked her to stop by.” Joe admitted, having to raise his voice as Herrmann apparently decided to crank the sound system up. “I thought it’d give Casey a chance to tell her before the wedding – I didn’t think it’d go like that.”  
“That’s the great Gabriela Dawson I’ve been hearing about for like two years?” Foster just looked plain baffled. “I mean, definitely not going to be anyone’s best moment, but did she just punch him or did I hallucinate that?”  
“Well, she did just find out her ex-husband is dating her old best friend.” Otis pointed out.

“And what is up with Captain Casey’s reaction?” Foster asked, gesturing towards the door Kelly and Matt had exited.

“That,” Mouch provided helpfully, “is what happens when Casey goes nuclear.”  
“He didn’t even yell.”  
“Oh, he was past yelling.” Mouch nodded sagely. “I’ve only seen it twice before. Once, Darden and Severide did something like Severide just did, got him out somewhere to calm down however that works. The other time, Herrmann you remember,”

“Yeah, I remember.” Herrmann nodded.

“Casey put a halligan through a wall – all the way through, out the other side, one hit.” Mouch finished the story off. Well, it was sort of a story. “He’d been lieutenant on Truck about six months. Haven’t seen his temper snap like that since. Don’t want to.”  
“He doesn’t either.” Herrmann tacked on. “He shuts down like that, he’s trying to hold it back, but you know, we’ve all known, Chief’s always known, Casey ain’t just blowin’ smoke when he says he can’t deal with something or he’s gonna lose control of his temper. He’s got a real long fuse ‘bout most things. Hit the end of it…not sure any of us like what’s down that road.”  
“I don’t think anyone has a long fuse about their ex.” Foster reasoned.  
“Especially not when she starts a fight like that.” Ritter remarked.

“He’ll be alright.” Stella reassured Sylvie quietly but firmly. “Kelly will calm him down, keep him from doing anything he shouldn’t.”  
“I know that.” Sylvie admitted, though she didn’t entirely like that it wasn’t her helping Matt deal with this. She didn’t entirely like the guilt she felt at having hurt Gabby, either. She hadn’t wanted to hurt Gabby. She just couldn’t help falling in love with Gabby’s ex-husband. It was clear that Gabby still had feelings, though, or she wouldn’t have reacted like that. Then again, if Gabby had stayed in touch, at all, Sylvie could’ve broached the subject in a conversation. You couldn’t cut people out of your life for over a year and then expect them to just be waiting right where you left them when you just dropped by. Her phone pinged and she saw it was a text from Kelly. – I’m taking Matt home. Meet us there. –

“Can someone take me home?” She asked the group at large. “Kelly’s taking Matt home, and I don’t have keys for Matt’s truck.”

“Yeah, I got you. I should call it a night anyway.” Joe drained the last swallow of his beer. Sylvie nodded and walked outside with him. As they reached his car, Joe spoke again, “tell Casey I’m sorry about…I should’ve given him a heads-up she was probably coming by Molly’s.”  
“It’s okay, Joe. He won’t be mad at you.”

When she got home, Kelly stopped her in the kitchen before she could head to Matt’s bedroom. He looked serious and sad and a little angry, too. It was definitely a night of a lot of mixed emotions all the way around apparently.

“Sorry I took over back there – Andy and me figured out a way of kind of getting him back from those lockdowns he does, without an explosion. He wouldn’t want you to deal with him like that.”  
“If we’re going to be serious about each other, as serious as I want and I think he wants, I’m going to have to deal with him ‘like that’ eventually.”  
“It’s been a decade since he got like that – maybe you won’t. Look, he’s cleaning up – I had a pair of sneakers in my car, he ran back here the last couple miles.”

“He ran? But, I didn’t think you left that far ahead of us.”  
“He runs fast when he’s pissed.” Kelly shrugged. “And he’s cycled into shame and guilt, just so you’re ready for that. This is when Andy or Hallie used to take over. If we’re lucky, by tomorrow, he’ll just be moody again.”  
“If we’re not lucky?”

“He’ll spiral.” Kelly said it so…easily, like it was just a basic fact, not something completely terrifying. “This combined with all the crap from last month, there’s a chance he gets bad again.”  
“Bad how?”  
“Bad like he acts like he’s just looking for a call that’ll do what he won’t do himself.”  
“You mean…?”  
“We just have to keep an eye on him. Hallie’s prescription always seemed to work.”  
“Yeah? What was that?”  
“Love him as hard as you can. Don’t let him feel alone.”

“Loving him I’ve already got down.”

She had to admit, just to herself, that she was nervous for the first time entering Matt’s bedroom. She was shaken by that confrontation with Gabby, and Gabby hadn’t even directed any of her attack at her, all at Matt. He was sitting on the bed, just a pair of sweatpants on, shoulders and head both down, looking somehow much smaller than she knew him to actually be. His hair was still wet from the shower, spikey from being towel-dried and him not bothering to comb it.

“Matt, you okay, baby?”  
“No.” Well, she hadn’t actually expected him to admit that. Okay, skip the ‘no seriously I know you’re not okay’ part she’d half planned in her head. He looked up at her, and god, he was so hurt, she bit back a gasp at how plain it was on his face. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I got angry and I shouldn’t have left without you, I was just so…I had to get it out.”  
“Kelly told me, but Matt, I’m not scared of your temper.”  
“You should be. Everyone else is. I am.” He looked back at the floor, keeping his head down. “I ended up with Aintin Jo because no one else…they were all scared of me. I didn’t look like much, but I was strong and I was angry, and I couldn’t shove it all down all the time. I’d punch holes in walls, throw things, I got into fights, and I couldn’t blame them, I mean, who keeps the son of a murderer and an abusive jerk with anger issues?”

“Everyone has ‘anger issues’ and you deal with yours better than pretty much everyone I know.”  
“I learned that control. Aintin Jo, she and her husband, they taught me to fight properly – MMA and boxing – to channel it, but also to tell people, someone who can help, that I’ve hit my limit.”

“That’s good. You _should_ express it.”  
“Sometimes, I hold on so hard, I get sort of locked down, like tonight. When I’m not…like this, we’ll talk about how to do what Severide did. I don’t want to cut you out, I want you to know me, even the me that’s not a good guy.” He looked up at her, and in that instant, no matter how hurt and scared he looked, she had never loved him more than when he admitted that he wanted to include her even in the parts of himself that scared him this much, that he hated this much, because that was a level of trust he was granting her and she had a horrible vindictive victorious swell of certainty that he’d never given that to Gabby. _She_ hadn’t earned that final wall breaking down.  
“I want to know all of you, Matt, no hiding anything, and I’ll do the same with you, but there is not a single part of you, not a single molecule in your entire body that is not a good guy. I told you once you’re good down to your bones, and I meant it. The fact that you do hold back, even that hard, that you know your limits and you express them, you do what you can to not ever hurt even the people who piss you off this much, that is just the proof of how good you are. Most people would’ve just thought she deserved to have you unleash on her. Especially after she punched you.”  
“I shouldn’t have touched her. I know better. I know how she gets when she’s really pissed at me.”  
“She’s hit you before.” Sylvie realized with another awful dawning realization.

“Only a couple times, if I pushed her past when she starts calling me ‘Casey’ when we’re not at work, she gets…it’s not a big deal. For one thing, we’re divorced, so it’s not anything that you need to worry about.” He sighed, trying a smile. “She’ll be apologetic tomorrow. Her better nature will win out. She’ll apologize in her own Gabby Dawson way, and probably wish us well. She’s a good person.”  
“She was an awful wife.”  
“No, she wasn’t.” Matt shook his head. “I was…I fucked up a lot of things. I said things that upset her, because I say things wrong a lot, I’m not good with words – we’ve all heard my attempts at pep talks in the house, I’m pathetic. I’m way too needy, I know that, I suffocate people, I’m controlling and selfish, I know, I just…I don’t want _distance_ between me and the people I love. I suffocated her, I _needed_ too much, and she’s an independent person-“  
“Matt, it wasn’t your fault.”  
“Of course it was. If I’d just let her take the risk, if I hadn’t said ‘no’ and tried to control her, let _her_ make _her_ decisions, but I’ll do better, I swear. You tell me to back off, I will.”  
“Woah, hold on, Matt, come here.” She sat next to him, somehow managing to pull him into her arms, which was a magic act because his shoulders were like twice hers at least. Usually he was the one holding her, making her feel cherished and safe and protected and loved. She tried to will all of that through her body into him. She gave him a few minutes, until his breathing slowed again. She kissed the top of his head fondly. “Matt Casey, I love you. You need to hear this tonight, so listen up. I love you. You are the best man, the best person, I’ve ever met. I love you.”  
“I-“  
“Nope, let me finish. Gabby called you an anchor tonight-“  
“I dragged her down, she needed to cut loose, be free of me-“  
“Matth-“ She cut herself off, then continued, “Ooh, I almost called you ‘Matthew’ because you won’t let me finish but I don’t want to call you that because you hate it. And I don’t even know your middle name anyway, so I _can’t_ whole name you.”  
“It’s James.” Matt sounded like he was almost chuckling, and right now, that was a beautiful sound, worth her kind of silly aside.

“Mine’s Elizabeth. Just by the way.” She didn’t know if he cared, but she felt like equality in sharing was important tonight of all nights. She went back to her point, “Gabby called you an anchor, and maybe to her, that’s what your solidness, your constancy, your integrity, and just the sheer weight of your love, maybe that’s what it was.” She pulled, gently, on his hair until he moved to meet her eyes with his own. “To me, Matt, all of that – your constancy, your integrity, your strength, and the incredible, wonderful, amazing, breathtaking weight and depth and breadth of your love, it’s not an anchor, it’s a _foundation_. It’s something I can build on, build myself and my dreams up from that foundation. Do you understand? The same things, the same characteristics, the exact same man, the good man that you are, and it’s just something entirely different to me. So don’t think of yourself as anything but exactly what I want – the perfect _foundation_ to build our life on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some people might take this chapter as "character bashing" of Dawson, but I did my best to write her exactly as the Gabriela Dawson I saw on the show (especially seasons 4-6) would react. I have a long list of times she was deeply unkind even abusive to Matt, but I tried to write her as reacting out of anger, not real malice because I never saw her as malicious, just reactionary, selfish, and manipulative. She knew how to get what she wanted out of Matt, and the only time her manipulations failed was when he was doing what was best for her, he wasn't trying to stand up for himself, his feelings, his needs, or what he wanted. Dawson will, as she often did in the show, act more reasonably once she's had time to calm down. The only difference I've written from what I saw on the show is that the people at 51 are actually supportive of Matt in this situation - on the show, everyone always tells him he's wrong and Dawson's right, no matter what the actual situation is (cough Louie cough). In my universe, since she left like she did, they've all gotten a big clue about what she's really like and a hint of what it would be like to be married to someone who went from "I want to have my baby with your sperm, I don't care what you think" to "I totally didn't discuss this with you, but I'm leaving for a few weeks, no months, no permanently" in what had to be literally an hour or so. Feel free to let me know what you think!


	10. Cruz's Wedding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had no ability to come up with a clever title for this one. I'm telling you, chapter titles are one of the hardest parts of writing these stories for me, I angst way too much over titles.

She hadn’t intended to spend the night before the wedding at Matt’s, because there was so much to do the next day for Joe’s and Chloe’s wedding. She’d planned to be at her place so she could get started early. She couldn’t justify leaving Matt alone the night after the rehearsal though, or the night before the wedding, or even the night of shift in between the rehearsal and the wedding. Everyone had been really willfully blind that she’d spent the night in Matt’s quarters, Chief hadn’t even said anything even though it had been pretty obvious and was against at least like three explicit rules. She thought the fact they’d left the blinds open and were clearly not doing anything but sleeping (well trying to) had helped. Those bunks might not be built for two, but they’d made it work, mostly by her sleeping half on top of Matt. Which was hot, in the temperature way, he was like a space heater – she didn’t know how he did it, she was always cold in bed but he literally radiated heat. Someday, she’d have to tell him he was literally hot. It was like a breathing heating pad, only this heating pad had a penis that took her proximity as an invitation and that wasn’t awkward at all while on shift, nope. Still, Matt had been sleeping poorly and if her being there with him helped even a little, it was worth it.

Then last night, he still hadn’t been much better. He was wallowing. He had been quiet about it, though he’d filled her in a little more about the last fight he and Gabby had, but she could tell he was still desperately hurting over the confrontation with Gabby. She’d slept, at least a few hours, cuddled into his side tightly, wanting him to absorb all the good things she felt about him right through her skin. Maybe it wasn’t possible, but that’s what she wanted. She’d learned a lot these last nights – and not that Gabby could be cruel when angry, she’d already known that. She’d learned that Matt blamed himself for the failure of his marriage, felt like he'd failed Gabby and himself because he hadn't fought hard enough for her, for _them_. She’d learned that there were deep parts of himself that Matt hated, and she'd been reminded that he had a deep and wide river of self-doubt inside him. How someone who was so good could think he so wasn’t confused and hurt her. He was so competent and confident at work, both jobs he had in fact, that it was too easy to forget his weak spots. She’d also learned that Gabby hit him, at least a few times, and she’d learned a little more about why Gabby and Matt had gone in like 24 hours from “we’re trying to have a baby” to “we’re separated”. It was just like Gabby to tell Matt he didn’t matter in her decision to have a baby. He hadn’t mattered either of the other times she’d decided to adopt a kid (or practically) – with Louie, Matt had been an afterthought, cut out until he caved in to doing what she wanted how she wanted when she wanted, and with Bria, Gabby had lied (at least by omission) to Matt, cutting him out again, saying it was because he didn’t like to get close to victims, which Sylvie thought was stupid reasoning: Matt was the first to follow up and help out someone usually. The fact that Gabby hadn’t made any obvious connection between Matt’s own trauma from his teen years (how had Gabby not known Matt had ended up with an assigned social worker, ‘in the system’?) and the situation with Bria just showed how self-centered Gabby had been. Matt told her to be careful, to think twice about something, Gabby took that as ‘he’s trying to keep me from doing what I want, so I’ll just lie to him’. Then, with the baby, to say it was just her risk? Sylvie couldn’t imagine doing that, to any guy actually, but to tell your husband that the decision to have a baby was _your_ decision even against his wishes…and to _Matt_ , who was just scared of losing another person he loved. What had Gabby been thinking? The man had had to pull his first fiancée out of a fire, then find out she was murdered because the clinic was dirty, and then five years later, here’s Gabby saying ‘it’s my decision if I risk dying, your feelings don’t matter’, how insensitive and selfish is that? That doesn’t even include the fact that of course his input matters, because it’s completely his choice where he puts his dick and his semen and stuff – though she’d gotten the impression from Matt that he’d had a secret niggling fear that she would’ve just manipulated him into giving in, or told him she was on birth control and not been, or just gotten him good and drunk, if she hadn’t done what she did and left him. Sylvie tried to imagine being married to someone you feared would do that, if you wouldn’t do it willingly or sober, well she was having a kid anyway so she'd have to find a way to get it over your objections. Worse, what if she'd risked it, died, and so had the baby? Matt wouldn't have gotten through that, not and come out the other side anything like the Matt Casey he was. So, no, Sylvie didn’t sleep much the last few nights with her brain running over it all, and she knew Matt didn’t sleep much either.

The day of the wedding, she woke up in Matt’s bed, having slept too little. And by ‘woke up’ she meant heard her alarm go off way too early. Matt was a morning person, she was not really. She wasn’t not a morning person, it was just that 5 am was not her idea of a good time to get up. She was better at 6 even, the time she normally got up for shift. Matt, of course, was awake and making coffee already because he was Matt and annoying like that. She hit the snooze four times. Matt got up right away to tackle his day no matter how little sleep he'd had. It was abnormal, that’s what it was. Matt was also going to be cranky as hell by the end of the reception unless she got him nice and drunk because he was tired. Drunk and tired he’d probably pass out. That, or they’d have a nice lazy round of sex. She could be down for that. She sort of slept-walked out into the kitchen, and Matt handed her coffee.

“Your hair appointment is at 9.” Matt reminded her. “And you’re supposed to have some sort of breakfast with the other bridesmaids before that. You’re meeting them at Chloe’s, with your dress, at 7. So, coffee, then a shower, and then you need to go.”  
“You are entirely too organized for this early.”  
“I’m used to keeping track of a lot of guys’ schedules.” Matt shrugged.

“You’re also anal retentive. It’s adorable, don’t get me wrong.” She said, seeing his facial expression change. “You’re very precise, Matt. You’re the only man I know who even dusts once a week.”  
“Things get dusty.”  
“I’m not criticizing.” She smiled, leaning up to kiss him softly. “You know, this is going to be a tough day. I’m going to have to see you in a tux pretty much all day, and I’m not going to be able to kiss you.”  
“Oh, that’ll be hard for you?”  
“Definitely. You clean up very nicely.”  
“I look like a doofus in nice clothes.”  
“Only if ‘doofus’ is the new term for incredibly handsome. You look like a Ken Doll, but you know, a living, breathing, sexy Ken Doll.”  
“I’m not sure being compared to a doll that if I remember right has no male anatomy is a compliment.”  
“Matt, don’t even pretend you don’t know what you’re packing.” She raised her eyebrows at him knowingly. Matt might be insecure about some things, but he was well aware that he was nicely hung – well, at least he was once he was hard. He was just a little above average soft. He was definitely a grower. She hadn’t asked him, but she kind of thought that was better. It was like being discretely well-hung, no one knew but him – and the women he had sex with, of course.

“You should probably go soon.” He smiled softly at her. “I’ll see you at the wedding, and because I love you, I will even agree to dance with you a couple of times at the reception.”  
“Oh, no, you’ll be dancing a lot more than that. We agreed to be the third couple at the end of the couple dance thing for one.”  
“We did?”  
“Uh-huh. Weeks ago. Joe and Chloe asked, and we both agreed. They dance first, then Kelly and Stella – Kelly had the same face you do right now – and then us, so people know the cue to join in.”  
“Was this at Molly’s?” Matt asked, looking suspicious.   
“Uh-huh.”  
“Was I driving that night?”  
“No.” She wasn’t going to lie to him.

“How much scotch did Cruz buy me before they asked that particular favor? I don’t remember agreeing to this.”  
“I don’t actually know. I think four or so.” She laughed lightly at his face. She kissed him again. “You’re not a bad dancer, as long as you have a partner. Just stay away from the club style dancing, stick to the dancing where you have to hold me really close to you. You’re good at that.”  
“Orders to keep you pressed up against me most of the night. Gee, what a hardship.”

She was incredibly grateful that Chloe had sandwiched her between two Catholic bridesmaids for the service. She had been to a few Catholic masses, sadly usually funerals for fallen firefighters, but it was a complicated order of things to learn and it always seemed like everyone else knew their cues and even the sometimes really long unison responses, without looking at any sort of order of service. They just memorized it. Matt had laughed at her, once, saying that if you grew up (as he did) Catholic and in Catholic school, you went to church so often you had it all memorized before you hit puberty and it rarely changed. She followed the lead of the Catholic bridesmaids, and made it through the service with only a few tears because how could you not cry at a wedding? There was something so beautiful about the big Catholic mass, though, and the church was beautiful, and the people were beautiful and okay, she was a little blitzed, just a little, on the champagne they’d opened over lunch before the wedding. She’d even gotten a little teary when she realized Matt was next to Kelly for everything – Chloe was so sweet, taking care of him like that. And if she’d happily stood a little too close to Matt for the pictures, sandwiching him between her and Kelly, no one said anything. He smelled fantastic. He’d clearly worn his nice sawdusty/wood cologne, and a nice amount of it, he smelled sexy and wonderful and like…well, like wood, which mixed with him was her new favorite smell, even over baking bread or like fresh strawberries. He was also in a great mood, and as she predicted, mostly laughing and joking with Kelly and the guys from Squad, all of whom were in Joe’s wedding party.

They made it until after dinner at the reception before she was tucked under Matt’s arm, comfortably so, with a glass of wine in her hand and a glass of scotch in his, when she saw Gabby coming towards them. She didn’t look angry at least. Sylvie hoped that Matt was right, and Gabby was going to be apologetic, or at least manage to wish them well. At minimum, be polite. It would be nice for Matt to hear an apology, though. Thank God the bruise on his cheek had been light, and Sylvie had been a little upset to realize he knew how to cover it with make-up (which he’d had to borrow from her) to be even more discrete. He said he normally could've just not shaved, but that wasn't an option for the wedding. Still, he’d been in a good mood until now, this was going to change that. No avoiding it though. No one left them this time, 51 stayed around, and Kelly stopped Gabby a few steps away.

“Don’t make a scene.”  
“I’m not gonna ‘make a scene’ Kelly.”  
“Yeah? A couple days ago you lit him up in Molly’s – you want a fight, take it somewhere he can fight back without ruining this for Cruz and Chloe.”

“I just want to talk.” Gabby assured him, and Kelly stepped out from between her and Matt (and Sylvie, who was still in her spot under Matt’s arm because it was her spot and she wasn’t giving it up and yes, the champagne and wine had gone to her head a bit). Gabby looked around at the group, and raised her eyebrows. “You guys want to give us a minute?”  
“No.” Kelly shook his head.

“It’s alright, guys.” Matt nodded his head to gesture that 51 should give them some space. Most of them moved away – a little – but Kelly just raised his eyebrows and stood where he was. Matt and Kelly then proceeded to have a completely wordless exchange of looks that was clearly an entire conversation that resulted in Kelly looking a lot like a bouncer who was not going to be moved without a SWAT team. Matt rolled his eyes, and turned his attention back to Gabby.

“Look, I just wanted to say that I realize that I left. I didn’t mean to leave you, either of you, I was just getting some space when I first went to Puerto Rico. I didn’t think I’d take a permanent position. There’s so much need, and I can do so much to help-“  
“Gabby, I told you when you informed me of the permanent move that I understood that.” Matt sounded tired. “I don’t blame you. There’s no hard feelings, not on my end at any rate.”

“I’m still kind of mad you didn’t even say goodbye. Either time.” Sylvie admitted honestly. “It isn’t very ‘best friend’ to just leave me a picture with your ex-husband.”

“It isn’t very ‘best friend’ to be fucking my ex-husband, either.” At least this time she made that basically accusation in an appropriately quiet voice.

“Gabby, don’t start. Not here.” Matt reminded. He also shot Sylvie a look, and she knew he meant her, too. Don’t wind her up, not here. No more ‘scenes’.

“I’m still overwhelmed by this, by…you. The two of you, _together_. It’s a lot to process. I know you were both the hardest hit by me leaving, and that gave you something in common, but to move on to this is a lot for me to take in.”  
“You-“ Matt’s arm squeezed her tightly, and she cut herself off. No scenes, no fighting, just let Gabby say whatever she felt she had to say. Right. That was the Matt Casey way. Sylvie hated public fights, too, but she could not believe Gabby was acting like losing Gabby was the only basis they had for a relationship. Sylvie had more to offer than that, and so did Matt. You'd think Gabby would have at least at one point loved them both enough to see their appeal as human beings.

“-so I reacted badly at Molly’s, and I’m sorry for that.” Sylvie tuned back in for the tail of Gabby’s ‘apology’ which from what Sylvie could tell, wasn’t really an apology but an excuse of her own behavior. She hadn’t apologized for hitting Matt. She hadn’t apologized for calling him an ‘anchor’ or for airing some of his private business like that, and she hadn’t apologized for saying the cruelest thing she could to Matt – that he was like his father. Sylvie knew that more than anything else _those_ things had been plaguing Matt.

“We’re not friends anymore, Gabby.” Sylvie couldn’t help pointing out, but she kept her tone calm and her voice low. “We used to be, but you haven’t even called me in over a year. You don’t speak to Matt at all, either. We don’t owe you anything. I still care about you, and I know Matt still loves you – not the same way he did, but he’ll always love you, you guys were married and I know he isn’t the type to stop loving once he’s started – and I’m okay with that, even while I’m in love with him, and I know he’s in love with me. We want you to be happy and oh, live your best life, to borrow a kind of silly phrase.”  
“I want you guys to be happy, too, of course I do.” Gabby sounded a little defensive. “I just am surprised that you’re being happy together. Matt never seemed like your type. You always went for the really sensitive, sweet, emotional, completely unselfish guys – like Cruz.”

“And I’m the opposite of that?” Matt raised his eyebrows, then shrugged. “It’s fine, Gabby. I’m sorry you found out by seeing it first – we wanted to tell you, discretely, but were trying to find a time. Cruz didn’t say he’d invited you to Molly’s. I should have been more careful, I knew you were back in Chicago, so I’m sorry about that. I’m not sorry I moved on, and I’m not sorry about my relationship with Sylvie. I _am_ sorry that it hurt you. That was never my intention.”  
“I know that.” Gabby admitted. “I’m going to go talk to the bride and groom, and then…my flight is early tomorrow. I’ve spent the last few days catching up with cousins, aunts, uncles, you know, so I’m pretty tired.”

“Make sure you find the chief.” Matt encouraged. “And say ‘hi’ to Cindy – she and Herrmann are over with Chief and Donna right now, you can do both at once.”  
“Yeah, I’ll do that.” Gabby half-smiled at him, then headed off. Sylvie sighed in relief. That could’ve devolved into a scene. She didn’t think Matt’s prediction that Gabby would be apologetic and wish them well had quite come true, but at least they’d cleared the air a little. Definitely not room enough to be inviting Gabby to their wedding. If they had a wedding, Sylvie forced herself to reason, Matt hadn’t asked yet, don’t get ahead of yourself, girl, just because he bought a house and worried about school zones and a yard and he had asked her to live with him, that didn’t mean they were getting married. She wanted that, but after his first marriage turned out so spectacularly, it might be a little while before he decided he wanted to try it again. Sylvie got distracted from her thoughts when she realized the first dance was about to start.

“Kelly, go grab Stella, we’re about to be ‘on’ in a few minutes. First dance is just Joe and Chloe, then the transition to a second song, you and Stella join, then me and Matt.”  
“Why did I agree to this?” Kelly asked, but he moved over to where most of 51 was standing, whispering in Stella’s ear.

“I’m still not sure I _did_ agree to this.” Matt whispered in her ear. “I think you got me drunk so you could take advantage of me.”  
“Maybe.” Sylvie admitted, leaning up to kiss him softly. “Maybe I plan to do the same thing tonight – get you drunk so I can have my wicked way with you later.”


	11. All the People I've Loved Before

Matt sat her down at the table in his and Kelly’s apartment where some substantial amounts of paperwork were spread out. He looked a little uncomfortable, but also pretty resolved. He sat next to her, and must’ve seen she was a little nervous because he smiled and kissed her cheek.

“Our appointment with the trust lawyer is tomorrow. I don’t want there to be any big surprises, so I’m going to go over the finances with you. I also think maybe I’ve been too secretive about this, like I’m trying to control everything or make all the decisions or something. I’ve definitely been selfish, doing what was best, or at least easiest, for me. You’ve been really great about letting me be an ass about the money for the house, but I should be honest.” Matt shrugged a little. “I just…it’s hard to talk about things sometimes for me.”

“I just don’t want you to feel like it’s ‘your job’ to make all the money or to financially take care of me.” Sylvie replied truthfully. “I know you make a lot more money than I do, that’s even without your construction business-”  
“I don’t care about that.” Matt brushed it off. “I was engaged to Hallie for years, Syl, she made more than double what I will ever make and she was still on the front end of her career. I don’t measure my manhood by whether I make more money than you do.”  
“One of many things I love about you.”  
“It’s just that…where the money came from, it’s a lot of crap I don’t talk about.”

“What money?”  
“To buy the house. The value of the house has to be transferred to the trust, along with title insurance all of that, so you’re going to see it all anyway, and like I said, I don’t want you to be surprised and I also think I need to be more upfront about it. If I'm asking you to not leave me out of things, I can't leave you out of things, especially not anything about _our_ house. So, this is the valuation of the house as it was when it was inspected, when I purchased it.”  
“Matt, this says you spent nearly $700,000 on the house. Before we spent anything on renovating it.” That was a lot of money. She knew houses in Chicago were expensive, and for Bucktown, that might not even be that much, but it was a lot of money. Sure, he was a captain, but he didn't make that much money, did he? 

“I know that.”  
“Where did you get that much money?”  
“We do have, I mean, there’s a mortgage on it, helping fund the renovations, too. Not a huge one, relatively, but-“  
“Not a huge one?”

“I had almost a $500,000 down payment, Sylvie.” She was sure she hadn’t heard him correctly. That was enough to buy a house outright in most parts of the United States, hell, in lots of parts of Chicago even. He had that much cash lying around? Since when? Where did it come from? Was Matt secretly rich or something?

“That’s…where did you get that much money?”  
“Short version?” Matt asked, then continued right away, “My dad and Gordon Mayfield.”

“Gordon Mayfield, wasn’t he the guy in charge of that trailer company?”  
“Yeah, Grandbrook, he and his brother and sister owned it. When he hired someone to burn down my place, he was liable – personally – for damages. I sued him. At least, my lawyers did. They threatened to take it to a jury, make an argument for emotional damages, the loss of all my stuff, you know.” Matt shrugged, but in a way that she knew wasn’t actually light-hearted.  
“You lost a lot more than can be replaced in a store, Matt. Everyone knows that.”  
“I guess Mayfield’s attorneys advised him to settle, that a decorated firefighter coming in and testifying about how the arson fire in my apartment destroyed everything I had left of my dead dad, and my first fiancee who was murdered, and the foster-son I raised but then lost when his biological father showed up, and the wife who’d left me to do humanitarian work in Puerto Rico, a jury would probably award me everything and anything, so they settled for a quarter million to me - I didn't pay attention to what my insurance company settled for, I just know they paid off the value of my condo to me and the lienholder. Add that quarter million to the equity I had in the old place, there’s your down payment.”

“But wasn’t half that equity Gabby’s? Didn’t you have to buy her out or something?”  
“Illinois isn’t a communal property state.” Matt shook his head. “The division is based on what each person brought into the marriage, notwithstanding other factors that didn’t really apply to Gabby and me: custody of children, if one was a ‘homemaker’, length of marriage, stuff like that.”  
“So she got nothing?”  
“She left with everything she brought in.” Matt sounded pretty firm on that. “I didn’t cheat her out of anything, hide any assets, or play any games. She wanted out as quick and easily as possible, no court dates, minimal attorney fees, basically, she wanted shed of me and mine as quickly as it was possible to be free of me.”  
“I doubt that’s exactly what she was thinking.” Sylvie didn’t want to defend Gabby, but he sounded like he was still hurt and angry about that. She couldn’t really blame him for the hurt feelings, but she honestly didn’t think Gabby had thought of it that way, especially given how territorial Gabby had been just a few days ago after the rehearsal dinner. Gabby still wanted Matt, Sylvie could tell that, she saw it in the way Gabby looked at him at the wedding reception, too. If Matt hadn’t been dating anyone, Gabby would’ve jumped his bones so hard when she came back to Chicago, no Gabby had not really fallen out of love with Matt. She just hadn’t loved Matt more than she loved her projects. Which was not really something Sylvie wanted to say out loud, she didn’t think that would really comfort Matt.

“It felt like it. It still does.” Matt shook his head. “You heard her at Molly’s. I was an awful husband for her, just an anchor holding her back, or down, with my needy emotional crap and my selfish desire to control her. Who _wouldn’t_ dump that bastard?”

“Matt.” She reached up to cup his cheek softly, and kissed him. “I’m sorry you went through that. I can’t really say I’m sorry you got divorced, I used to be, but now I’m kind of greedy and don’t want to give you up, so…you’re mine and no one else can have you.”

“The quickest way to get the divorce settled was to just split it all back up, which was easy, we didn’t have much shared. We’d never even gotten a joint bank account. She never took my name or anything. I bought the condo, so it was mine wholly in the divorce – the place I had before that was the sole down payment source.”

“You owned a place before you lived with Gabby?”  
“Yeah, when I moved out of the place I shared with Hallie, I took the money I got from my dad and bought a fixer-upper, gave me something to do in the off hours since she…I didn’t have anyone to go home to and Andy had just died so I had to have something to _do_.” Matt sighed again. “Which is the other thing I’m not used to talking about. When my parents divorced, they sold the house I grew up in to split all the assets. Mom was renting when she killed him, and they were always fighting about his support payments, so there wasn’t anything there, but Dad had bought a new place. They liquidated his estate in probate, and since he died without a will, it was divided among his heirs – me and Christie basically. My half came out of the trust when I was 21, but I just kind of left it in the bank until I bought that fixer-upper.”  
“So, how much total investment or financing do we, does the trust, have on the new house?”  
“Right now, our max budget is $900,000 so yeah, we have a pretty nice renovation budget. That’s how much the house should assess at with renovations, given that neighborhood, so the finance company was willing to finance that much, not much above it, even with the size of my down payment.”  
“This is…Matt, are you sure you want to put everything into this? What about retirement or-“  
“We have pensions, Sylvie.” Matt pointed out. “Besides, real estate in Bucktown is a good investment, it’s not likely to decrease in value. I have money in stocks and things, too, don’t worry. I’m not putting everything into the house.”  
“So, any other financial things you need to explain to me? This is a lot of paperwork for just that one thing about the trust.”  
“Ah, well, I figured, while we’re talking about the house, all of this stuff has to be filed because it’s all about the house. Since we had to have the trust approved by the title company, they wanted proof of a bunch of stuff. So, are you ready to be overwhelmed by how much paperwork goes into a major renovation? Because I have permits and approvals by the dozens to go through with you, now that you’re going to be a co-owner of the place.”

“I am ready. I think.” She grinned at him, though, showing she was joking about that last bit.

They talked through all the paperwork on the house, and it took more than hour to do so – and that was with Matt simplifying for her, she knew that. He showed her the budget for the renovations and how much they’d spent, how much they’d already ‘spent’ in their plans, and what was left for them to spend later. He also discussed how much the mortgage was each month, and they might have had their first argument about his refusal to let her pay any part of it. If she was going to be a co-owner she should have co-responsibility, she argued. He reminded her that he made a lot more money than she did. She may have gotten mad and reminded him that he’d said he didn’t care about that. His compromise was that he’d pay the mortgage but the bills would be in her name – utilities, cable, internet, all of that. She was okay with that. It wasn’t an even split but he did also have a point that their income wasn’t evenly split. As far as fights went, it was pretty minor – she slammed his bedroom door kind of hard, but they also made up about ten minutes later. Kelly and Stella, thankfully, were out at Molly’s, so she and Matt could solidify their newly made agreement by cuddling on the couch watching the Real Housewives of New Jersey which was her stupidly guilty pleasure show that she was now, thanks to the wonders of streaming services, introducing Matt to – his complete bafflement about every single thing on the show (including the houses – only Matt watches a show like that and ends up criticizing the buildings!) made her laugh so much, it was always a lot of fun. It wasn’t that Matt was clueless about pop culture, but he wasn’t exactly a follower of trends, and he certainly would never have watched any kind of reality tv that wasn’t a sporting event.

She’s not sure what sparks his decision, but he hits mute suddenly about ten minutes into the third episode. He doesn’t shift their position, so she’s still got her head on his lap, well, on a pillow on his lap, because she liked being able to look up at him for all his reactions to the show and he seemed to like idly running his fingers through her hair. He simply looked down at her with an expression on his face that said she was not really going to enjoy whatever he had decided he needed to tell her right now.

“I think we need to talk about what happened at Molly’s.”  
“Your, uh, you and Kelly, or-“ She wasn’t sure how to refer to his sort of shutdown thing.  
“No, I meant, what Gabby said.”  
“We already talked about it – her anchor versus my foundation.”  
“And that is the most amazing thing anyone has ever said to me.” Matt assured her, leaning down to kiss her softly but with a whole whopping dose of love she could feel like he was breathing it into her. Matt had these magical powers that completely defied basic laws of like chemistry, which might explain why he failed chemistry in high school (Matt said he’d failed, Kelly had laughed and pointed out that ‘fail’ for Matt was apparently a C-plus). “I meant, about my…history.”  
“You mean when she said you’re just like your father? She was just being cruel, Matt, you’re nothing like him.”  
“I’m a lot like him in some ways.” Matt shrugged. “I look like him, I think – if I remember the pictures from when he was younger right, anyway – not like a twin or anything, but similar enough. He loved sports, especially hockey.”  
“In the _important_ ways, you’re not your father. I know that. Everyone who knows you knows that.”  
“None of you knew him. How would you know if I was like him?”  
“Because you could never hurt someone you love like he hurt your mom, and you, and Christie.”  
“I hope not. I try to…” Matt’s voice broke a little. “I loved my dad. When I was a little kid, things were mostly good, or I didn’t see it, something. He started drinking – again, I was told later – when I was like six. At first, it was all about when he was sober. If he was sober, everything was fine that I could see. When he was drunk, he was mean.”  
“Well, there’s a key difference right there.” Sylvie pointed out, smiling up at him. “You’re a funny, cuddly, sexy drunk – you don’t get mean, you mostly get affectionate and then really horny.”  
“I’m always ‘horny’ for you, babe.” Matt laughed a little as he kissed her. “I just lose the filter when I drink.” He sighed softly. “So did he. Then, he stopped needing to be drunk. He’d always been a big disciplinarian. I used to live in fear of a metal-handled flyswatter.”  
“A flyswatter?”  
“One on a nail by the back door, in the kitchen. If I messed up, was late for dinner, forgot a chore, talked back, anything he thought needed it, I got that across my ass – I could never figure out if there was a system to how many swats. Christie called it a ‘Mattswatter’.” Matt scoffed, and shook his head. “He only ever used his hand with her, said it was ‘cause she was a girl, and girls aren’t as tough as boys. He clearly had never met the women in my life: you, Stella, Foster, Gabby, Hallie, Cindy, hell, _Trudy_.” Matt chuckled at that. Sylvie had to join him, Trudy was notoriously tougher than her husband ever thought about being and that wasn’t entirely a slight on Mouch.

“My dad threatened the belt a couple times, but I never got it. Leo did, once. I mostly got time-outs and grounded.”  
“Dad was old-fashioned and pretty strict. You didn’t ask him questions you just said ‘yes sir’. Things got real rocky between him and Mom when I was about twelve, Christie’s junior year of high school. I think they’d been bad for a while, but it got obvious then, and they divorced Christie’s senior year. Christie was older, she was always out with her friends, but I saw how it got, he talked to her like she was nothing, just a complete failure at everything, and most kids are probably upset about a divorce but except that I had to switch schools, and they sold the house, I wasn’t that upset. I thought we’d all be happier with them apart, you know?”  
“I get it. They wouldn’t fight as much.”  
“They still fought. He was still just mean to her, the way he talked to her like…I hated it. I promised myself I’d never, ever, talk to a woman, even one I hated, like he talked to her. I would never intimidate a woman like he did to her, bully a woman, try to control a woman or assert myself kind of over her like he did. That Gabby feels like I did that…yeah, that’s…” Matt’s voice broke again. “It’s hard, but I think, some of that is on her.”  
“What do you mean? I mean, I agree, but I just want to know how you reason it out.”  
“I have a lot of baggage, I know that. But she does too, and I don’t even know where some of it came from, but I look back and she was always really sensitive to any hint that I didn’t want her to do something or even just take a minute to consider something carefully, like she had to go right away and prove me wrong for some reason.” Matt shrugged. “So I think, I’m not sure, that maybe she genuinely saw it that way, but it wasn’t that way. I still don’t think it’s ‘controlling’ her to not want her to get pregnant and risk killing herself and the baby. It’s selfish as hell, but I can’t…” He stopped, and now he did sort of pull her up to sitting up, and he turned a little to face her. “Sylvie, do not die before me, don’t do that to me. Take care of yourself, double and triple careful on that ambo, because I cannot do that again. I’ve buried enough people I love. Okay?”  
“I can’t guarantee I won’t die before you, Matt.” Sylvie said, but she cupped his face gently as she promised him, “I promise I will do absolutely everything possible, and triple-check it, to make sure I come home safely to you if at all possible. If I die before you, I want it to be when we’re both old and I’m fat and you’re bald, surrounded by kids and grandkids and you’re chugging Viagra to keep up with me. So you better be triple-careful too.” Matt kissed her, hard, then but she could feel and hear him laughing as he did it. She hadn’t said it to make him laugh, but she still loved that sound. He wasn’t light-hearted often enough, especially these last few months, and even just that little break in a heavy conversation like this, she reveled in his laugh.

“Sylvie, I’m pretty sure that you’ve got that turned around – I’ll die before you because I took too many Viagra trying to keep up with you.”  
“That does seem more likely. When you’re ninety and I’m eighty-two, and I can shock everyone by telling them I rode you to death.” She raised her eyebrows at him and he was laughing again, shaking his head at her.

“That does sound like a perfect ending.” Matt’s smile was broad and genuine, but it only lasted a moment. Then he was serious again. “You know, I didn’t even mean to talk about any of that. My dad, I mean. I thought you might want to know about the other stuff she said, the uh, sordid sexual history of Matt Casey, I guess.”  
“I already knew about you and the ex-Mrs-Pridgen, which he was totally out-of-line, it’s not like you knew who she was when you picked her up at the bar, and plus, he wasn’t even at 51 yet, you’d never met him, so why would his ex-wife mean anything to you? I mean, sure, it wasn’t your best decision-making ever, but you were hurting from the break-up with Gabby and did something stupid, mostly thinking with your penis. I don’t think that’s even unusual.”  
“I was an idiot. I should've at least cut it off the second I knew she was his ex-wife. But, I wanted to clear some things up, about…Heather Darden, Andy’s widow, Gabby kinda threw out there that I was sleeping with her after Andy died. She stayed over at my place one night, Kelly came over the next morning, made an assumption, shouted about it at 51.” Matt looked very serious when he met her eyes. “I never slept with Heather. She kissed me, once. I told her I couldn’t, that I thought we needed to respect that I’d been Andy’s best friend, that I was ‘Uncle Matt’ to his boys. She understood. She slept on the sofa, she was wiped, that was it.”  
“That makes total sense. Not that I even paid much attention to what Gabby said in that rant of hers, but Matt, I know you. Just like me, you’re very loyal. It’s why we didn’t jump each other’s bones six months before we did. Be honest.”  
“Uh, maybe four months.” Matt hedged. “It took me a while to even realize what I was feeling was more than friendship, close friendship, but that there was more to it than a deep friendship and loneliness on my part, that took me a while to admit to myself. I didn’t want to mess up our friendship, or the feeling around the house, because I just needed to get laid, you know?”  
“Well, I just refused to admit I was in love with Gabby’s ex-husband for six months or so because of the Gabby’s ex-husband bit – but you’re just Matt, not her anything, not anymore, not to me anyway.”  
“The other thing she referenced, the uh…the thing with the mother of one of my teammates, that…” He trailed off for a second, “that was true. I told her, we were talking about kind of our biggest regrets, and I didn’t want you to think that was something I was proud of, or even all that okay with, I mean, I was at the time, it wasn’t like I was coerced-“  
“Matt, you’re kind of rambling. So take a breath, tell me what you want to tell me, but I only need to know what you want to tell me.” Sylvie reassured him. “The only sexual history of yours that I am interested in is who you’ve slept with since we got together.”  
“No one.” Matt looked offended, and he was kind of adorable in his offense. His nose all crinkled and his forehead too, it was cute.

“Except me. That’s the way I like it and the only bit that really matters to me. If you want to tell me, then I’ll listen, but you don’t have to justify yourself to me.”

“I feel like maybe I owe you an explanation.” Matt replied. “I don’t want anything festering between us. So, short version is that when I was a junior in high school, I got invited to prom by a girl – she invited me – and I was living with my aunt and uncle at the time, going to Schurz High School, it was my third school in three years. A week before prom, Jennie – the girl – apparently finally told her parents who her prom date was. They forbid her from going with me, said I was ‘bad news’ and ‘troubled’ so she last-minute asked my teammate, from baseball, Tim Garvin to go with her.”  
“She asked your teammate?”  
“She liked baseball players.” Matt shrugged. “We hadn’t been dating or anything, so I played it off, whatever, and she was a little rebellious, so she had pictures at Tim’s house and invited me over – I borrowed his tux and she took pictures with both of us.”  
“She sounds like…something.”  
“She was a corker as Aintin Jo would say.” Matt smiled a little at that. “Jennie and Tim went off to prom and I was still there, kind of…let down, I guess. Tim’s mom was…there too.”  
“So you and she…you were seventeen!”  
“She offered me a drink and it wasn’t 7-up. We started talking. Somehow, I ended up confessing all this crap about how I was going to die a virgin because no girl would ever even date a guy like me, Jennie being my then prime example. I have no idea what she was thinking. She just sort of kissed me. So, what I told Gabby, and I’ll tell you, one of my big regrets was losing my virginity that way. I wish I’d waited for a girl I really cared about. And one my own age, more or less.”  
“How old was she?”  
“I don’t know, like 40? Young for a mom, I guess.” Matt shrugged. “Tim never found out, not that I know of, no one ever did. It wasn’t like it became an affair. I’m not even sure I saw her again except a couple of times at baseball games. I know some guys would brag about it – Tim’s mom was _hot_ for a mom, and his parents had divorced when he was a baby – but it felt weird, after. Maybe it’s not very, uh, masculine of me, but I wish I’d waited for someone I felt something for besides I guess lust.”  
“I can see how you’d have regrets about that. I don’t think it’s un-masculine or whatever at all. Guys have lots of feelings tied up in sex too, especially first times. It sounds like maybe she took advantage of you, Matt.”  
“I was pretty enthusiastic at the time.” Matt reasoned. “It was inappropriate as hell, for both of us but especially her. I don’t even understand it. I’m close to that age now and just the idea of a seventeen-year-old girl makes me cringe. At that moment, I thought every other guy I knew was having sex, like seventeen was way too old to still be a virgin, and she was offering, and she really did have nice…well, anyway it’s just a regret. I didn’t want you to wonder where Gabby got all that stuff, is all. No secrets. Right?”  
“You know, I’m not judging at all, Matt, and I love that you share things with me, but if something makes you uncomfortable, you don’t _have_ to tell me. I don’t need to know everything, at least, not right now. We have a lot of years to keep learning about each other.”  
“You just don’t want me to ask about _your_ first time, do you?” He teased her, and she was incredibly grateful that he was clearly ready to lighten the mood too. This had been a heavy night, and she was more troubled than she wanted to let him know right now about that story he’d told, and that Gabby had flung it at him like a weapon or like _he_ ’d done something wrong.

“Nope. It was even more embarrassing than your story.” His was actually sort of creepy, she thought, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. What kind of middle-aged woman has sex with a boy that age? Undoubtedly Matt had been a cute kid, but just that – a cute kid. He’d grown into a beautiful man, but at seventeen he must’ve been so baby-faced, given how young he looked in some of the early photos from his time at 51 that she had seen. Yeah, she was definitely thinking it was creepy. Her own story was just silly and embarrassing – no matter how awkward it had been, at least Jacob had been her own age.  
“Just to be clear, I don’t care about your past. I won’t ask. Like you, all I care about is what happened after we got together, not before.” He stood up, pulling her towards him. “My job, and it’s a fun one, is to make you forget that there _were_ guys before me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm about 1,000 words from finishing the draft of the last chapter. So, quick reader poll: would you rather have a chapter posted per day to decrease the lag between this story and a possible eventual third story (my work schedule is about to become insane, due to the time of the year it is - I always get crazy busy late-April and early-May) or two chapters per day to resolve this story faster? Let me know.


	12. You Called Trudy?

Renovations on the house were going slower than she liked, but Matt kept telling her that delays were normal and with a renovation that big he’d told her it would take six months, especially since he was doing a lot of the work himself instead of having a crew in to do it. He’d reminded her, more than once, that all those flipping and fixer upper shows she liked to watch had construction crews, whereas she had basically Matt. He hired in crews for some of the work, and subcontractors for things he wasn’t qualified to do (like major electrical or plumbing things) or the big projects like the new deck. It seemed like a lot of hurry-up-and-wait though, and she’d never really paid attention to how long it took to get custom granite countertops installed before. The fact that they’d put granite on every counter in the house – kitchens and bathrooms – except in the basement meant they’d had to pick out a few slabs that mostly matched and then it seemed waiting took forever. Matt was working on the flooring, he’d found some actual Victorian-era flooring through a salvage buddy of his, but they had to be laid and refinished and things she didn’t fully understand beyond Matt being really excited. He was adorable when he was excited, and if she had visions of little boy versions of Matt every time he got like that, well, she didn’t have to tell anyone about that.

Between renovations, typical spring over-time, and Nancy’s wedding, she and Matt were pretty busy. Nancy was suddenly calling Matt every other day, and Sylvie knew that some of it was about money. Matt was fine with kicking in for the wedding, apparently, which Sylvie wasn’t entirely sure she liked. She didn’t know Nancy well enough to call her and tell her that every time she needed more money it meant Matt took on more work, whether another overtime shift or another construction project, around their renovations and his regular work schedule. Sylvie hated that he was so busy, but on the other hand, the busier he was the more ‘normal’ he seemed to reach – he was acting more and more like the Matt she knew before all those stupid pictures, before he even went to 29. So that was good. She just hated how tired he was, and she hated that he was not at all looking forward to his mom’s wedding in a few weeks.

They were on shift when Voight showed up at the house with Ruzek and the new girl, Vanessa. Sylvie didn’t really know her, but she knew Jay and Adam. They went into Chief’s office, and she was wondering if there was yet another reason for Intelligence to be recruiting someone from 51 to do some sort of interesting undercover work. Voight never stopped by for social reasons. She got the feeling he wasn’t a particularly social guy, and there was still some suspicious feelings towards Voight in the house, at least from the people who’d been there a long time. Matt was polite to him, but that was all, and as with most things in the house, everyone else pretty much took their cue from Matt. A few minutes later, Chief came out, called her and told her to get Matt from his quarters and come into his office. She hoped this was what she suddenly thought, that Intelligence had come through on the favor she’d asked, but she also worried this was something else, that they needed Matt for something, or something else had gone wrong, and then what if Matt was mad that she’d called in the favor, even if it was what she hoped it was.

As she pretty much expected, Matt was on edge the minute he saw Voight. She’d told him Intelligence was in Chief’s office, she maybe should’ve warned him it was Sergeant Voight himself. Matt was friends with most of the guys in Intelligence, he and Halstead even played in some sort of sport league together (she couldn’t quite picture Jay in hockey, so maybe baseball) last year. Sergeant Voight got right to the point.

“You should be expecting a call from Terry Anderson’s attorneys, Casey. Probably today.”  
“Why? He and his wife pled all the charges down to misdemeanor obscenity and paid the fines.” Matt didn’t sound nearly as bitter as she felt about that. Ex-Chief Gayan had been fired from the CFD, even lost her pension, but it’s not like she needed the money and the fines for the obscenity charges for both her and her husband had come to like $5,000. It had all been taken care of weeks ago exactly as Matt had predicted. Matt had years of fall-out to deal with from it, and they basically got a tap, not even a slap, on the wrist.

“Miss Brett called in the favor we owed her.” Voight replied. “We looked into your case, found out it wasn’t so settled as the detectives you talked to a couple weeks ago thought. Turns out, those pictures have been posted to several websites, certain types of websites.”  
“You had _Voight_ dig into my private business?” Matt spun to her, looking both angry and betrayed. Sylvie was sorry he was upset, but she wasn’t sorry she did it, not if it made those pictures go away for good. Matt would forgive her. Probably. In time.

“Intelligence has ways of making things happen. If the system needs a work around, they find it. The system’s answer to your case _sucks_.” Sylvie knew that was exactly what Matt didn’t really like about Voight, but in this case, well, she was willing to live with a slightly smudged halo.

“You think the 5 grand in fines they paid for those pictures being made public is too cheap?” Matt asked with a scoff. “My _life_ isn’t worth that much to Voight – two grand wasn’t it, Sergeant? That was the cost of having me killed?”  
“What?” Sylvie had never heard this.

“That’s how we met. I testified against his son in a DUI with a serious injury to the passenger in the other car. Aside from threatening Hallie and me, having me jumped, he also tried to have me set up for possession of enough cocaine to see me in prison for fifteen years, and offered a gang member two grand to ‘shut me up for good’.”  
“Protective fathers make bad decisions.” Voight admitted at her accusatory look.

“It wasn’t bad enough random strangers and hell, Donna Boden, your mother – who won’t look at me at all, let alone look me in the eye, who knows how many other people I have to see every damned day, have seen these things, now you’re showing them to everyone we know at CPD?” Matt asked her sharply.

“That’s not what happened.” Ruzek stepped forward, his tone pitched in a way that Sylvie knew was used specifically for upset victims. It was weird thinking of Matt as a victim, but he was. Ruzek moved directly into Matt’s line of sight, clearly counting on the fact that Matt was more comfortable with him than with Voight or the new girl. “Sylvie asked Platt to-“  
“Trudy too?” Matt literally threw up his hands. “Why don’t we just put them up on fucking billboards?! Every other fucking trauma in my fucking life ends up on a billboard! Add this one! Why not?!”

“Hey, Casey, let me explain.” Adam tried again. “Platt hasn’t seen the actual photos. She just provided the, uh, lit fire under some asses to get some manpower allocated, alright? No one has seen the photos – not me, no one in Intelligence, not Voight either – nobody except some computer crime tech guys, and trust me, they’ve seen a lot worse. You’re a good-looking guy, Casey, I admit, but not that memorable to them I bet, given some of the disturbing shit they wade through.” Adam shot a look at Vanessa that Sylvie couldn’t quite decipher. She didn’t really bother trying, she focused on Matt, who looked like he was calming down. Maybe it was just her cue to take over, because she did.  
“I was the liaison with the tech team. I have the background in the tech and given we’ve barely been introduced, it was less personal for me to arrange the investigation.”  
“We got two things out of it, man.” Adam took back over, which was probably good, because judging by Matt’s posture and expression, he found it a lot easier for whatever reason to deal with Adam than with Vanessa. Maybe it was just that Adam was a guy or that he'd worked with Adam before, they were friends. “First, serious court injunctions – without your name attached, pseudonyms are common for this sort of thing – to prohibit those images from being on any website anywhere.”  
“CPD’s tech team has added your face to recognition software to automatically alert on these images or any deepfakes created from them with your face attached.” Vanessa put in.  
“Is that a common thing, too?” Matt asked.

“No, that was an extra courtesy.” Voight answered. “Out of respect for CFD. And I figured it was the least I owe you.”  
“Notice of the criminal charges and the injunctions are automatically sent out to all the websites, so no more posts on the hook-up apps. Second thing we got is criminal charges, serious criminal charges, against Terry Anderson. Traced the creation of the images and the postings back to him – all of them after his last plea deal.” Adam scoffed. “Man’s an idiot, had a one-week-old agreement and he broke it. He’s facing a couple Class 3 felonies, plus some Class 4s. Given he’s just thrown the leniency of the DA’s office back in their face, I’m not sure even being as rich as he is will get him another chance at pleading down. Even if he does, they can’t justify going below a felony.”

“So that just means a more expensive fine. Class 4 is what 25 grand? A lot to you or me, but that’s like a day’s pay for Terry Anderson, maybe less – a hundred bucks to you or me.”  
“It means at least long-term probation on a repeat offense – he pled to a related misdemeanor already this year, and it’s April.” Adam pointed out. “And a criminal felony conviction on his record that he’s gonna have to explain to every charity, business partner, or socialite he talks to for the rest of his life. You think a guy like Terry Anderson really wants to be explaining his taste in male firefighters to those people?”  
“It also means he is now personally liable for damages, which is why you should expect contact from his attorneys.” Vanessa added. “You can sue him and given his wealth, you’d probably win a big settlement.”  
“Yeah? How’s buying me off ever worked out?” Matt asked Voight, but there was almost a smile on Matt’s face. And it was kind of strange, but Voight was actually smiling back, and Sylvie was a little creeped out.

“I wish him luck. He’s got deeper pockets than I had.”  
“I don’t care about the money. I just want to never have to see those things again.”  
“We can’t guarantee that, but we did make it a lot less likely.” Vanessa smiled at Matt. “All the legitimate sites, the apps and stuff, they’ll have it down by this afternoon I bet. They pay attention to court injunctions.”

“Take him to the cleaners, Casey.” Adam encouraged with a grin. “The city doesn’t pay us enough as it is. Get your kids a college fund. Besides, rich bastard like that, he only feels it when you hit his pocketbook.”  
“I don’t like being bought off.”  
“It’s not – it’s damages.”  
“It will probably include a non-disclosure agreement.” Vanessa added helpfully.  
“I don’t want to disclose or discuss anything. I just want it to go away.”  
“Take the call from his lawyers. Tell them to go to hell. You do it well.” Voight said, with a small inclination of his head. “They’ll up their offer.”  
“Think of it as revenge. You can’t punch him, but you can punch his bank account.” Adam shook his head. “I’m sorry this shit happened, man. You need anything, we got your back, you know that. Don’t leave it to your girlfriend to come asking, give me a call.”

“Chief, thanks for letting us use your office.” Voight shook hands with Chief, then extended a hand to Matt, who took it. “Casey, you need anything, this asshole keeps harassing you like this, call Ruzek. We’ll take care of it.”  
“If I don’t, apparently Sylvie will.”  
“You certainly go for the determined type.” Voight grinned in what Sylvie guessed was approval. Adam, Vanessa, and Sergeant Voight left then, and Matt turned to her. Chief discretely left his office, giving them a modicum of privacy.

“You called Trudy?” Matt asked softly.  
“Hey, I am just as protective of you as you are of me. You would call in every favor anyone ever owed you if someone was doing this to me, and you’d probably show up outside his door with a halligan, so just be grateful that the halligans are a little unwieldy for me – I can’t swing it as hard as I’d like to hit Terry Anderson.” Sylvie was not going to be budged on this. She was not sorry, especially since it had been so successful. Maybe Intelligence had had to do some interesting maneuvers to get whatever the charges all were to stick against Anderson (and hopefully Gayan, too, though they hadn’t said much about that) but she didn’t care. If those pictures stopped cropping up, it was worth it. It was worth a lot more than she’d done, just calling in a favor.

“You know Voight has seen them.”  
“Adam said he didn’t.”  
“Nothing in that unit happens without Voight’s eyes.” Matt shook his head. “Weird thing, I really think it didn’t change his opinion of me at all.”  
“He respects you. I think he might even like you.” Sylvie couldn’t quite tell, but she was pretty sure, she’d put money on it anyway. “He doesn’t understand you, but he likes you.”  
“I don’t understand him, either. I try not to think about how he runs his unit – too much off the books off the record stuff for me. But he _is_ effective, and that’s the damned thing.”

“What do you mean?”  
“I think I owe him a beer now. I never thought I’d buy a beer for Hank Voight.”

“You could reframe the whole thing.” She tried, smiling up at him as brightly as she could. “He tried to have you killed and now he respects you for the exact same integrity you had that used to piss him off. I bet that grates on him – that he kind of likes you, not just despite that you got his son in trouble, but pretty much _because_ of it.”  
“And him. He was in prison for a while for the solicitation of murder charge. Got off after a few months.”  
“So, see, revenge is best served in unexpected ways.” Just like her subtle revenge against Terry Anderson. That’s what you get when you mess with Sylvie Brett’s man. Criminal charges and civil liabilities and hopefully publicly ridiculed and outted as a total creeper, and on the bad side of CPD’s Intelligence Unit. If she couldn’t hit him really hard a lot of times with a halligan, well, this would have to do.

She wasn’t all that surprised when Matt came home from running errands the next day and announced that he’d gotten a new phone number. He was going to be giving it out individually to people who needed it. His old business cards were all useless, and he was going to lose some business possibly because of it, but he’d also gotten a new business phone number (he had stopped using his personal number for his construction when he was an alderman – he had some routing software thing now, which sent work calls to his phone but kept the number separate) and was able to discretely change to just Casey Construction instead of M. Casey Construction, and listed as owned by M. James Casey (even small changes, he said the police said, make a big difference in people finding you online) – apparently a little pressure from Trudy had gotten him through the right city departments on that quickly, he just had some paperwork to finish. Obviously he wasn’t living any longer at the address that had been put on those apps or whatever. Now he wasn’t at those numbers either. His construction email had not been posted anywhere (it wasn’t in his FD personnel file) so he wasn’t going to change that. It was a huge hassle, he was going to have to contact everyone, and probably some people would have questions about why he’d changed his number. Still, as he pointed out, if it stopped the random calls from strangers asking to hook up or pissed that he’d posted a fake address, the hassle was well worth it.

“You know what was funny about it?” Matt asked, after he’d fill her in on everything, and of course given her the new number to put in her phone.

“What?”  
“I kind of explained the situation to the tech guy from PD that Ruzek hooked me up with today, and the guy kept talking about changing all my passwords and factor authentication and I didn’t understand half of what he said. I asked him like did he mean bank passwords or my PIN for my debit card and he said ‘no, man, I mean for all your sites – your Insta, Snap, that stuff’. I told him I didn’t even know what those _were._ ”  
“Yeah? How’d he react to that?”  
“I think I aged about forty years in a minute, at least in his estimation. You could see him go from ‘oh, cool, firefighter guy’ to ‘wow, you’re a dinosaur’.” Matt laughed. “I’m pretty sure he muttered something about being a Boomer as I left. Ruzek laughed too. I don’t even know what a ‘boomer’ is, except my parents were Baby Boomers.”  
“I think it’s charming that you completely don’t care about that stuff.” Sylvie had to laugh though too. “You know, an Instagram for your construction company might be a good idea. Show off projects and stuff. It has like a billion users now.”

“Sylvie, I wasn’t lying. I don’t even know what Instagram _is_ , exactly.”  
“It’s all pictures, pretty much. You can caption things, like explain the work you did, but you would put up like before and after photos, or in-progress photos, to show and it works like your portfolio. Only it’s online and anyone can follow it.”  
“People shop for contractors on social media?”  
“People do everything on social media now.” Sylvie encouraged. “I’m not saying you have to do it, but you should consider it. Plus, I bet Gallo and Ritter would be really happy to help you get everything set up and show you how to get the best hashtags and stuff.”  
“Hashtags?”  
“Just ask them. It’ll build rapport, you’re usually the one in charge, and on a fire scene there’s no one I’d trust more to bring up a young firefighter than the combination of like you and Herrmann and Severide, but think how complimented they’ll feel if you let them teach you something.”  
“I’ll think about it. On one condition.” Matt agreed, smiling warmly at her. He kissed her quickly. “You have to be my insta-whatever manager. I’m not going to do it right, or take good pictures – I take what’s useful for me. You have a good idea of what it’s supposed to be, and you’re a lot better about this crap than I am.”  
“You want me to be involved in your company?”  
“Sylvie, I want you involved in every single aspect of my life, and yes, sometimes that’s going to include incredibly dusty, dirty, construction sites.”  
“I do like you dirty.”  
“Really?”  
“Mm-hmm. I like that dirty in your eye right now. Kelly and Stella went to the gym.”  
“Really?” Matt asked, pulling her tightly against him as he kissed her much more aggressively this time. She had no regrets as he moved them towards the bedroom while never pulling their mouths apart for longer than a quick gasp for breath.

“You like me dirty, huh?” Matt asked, as he gently pushed her back to sit on the edge of his bed, and now she was eye level with his crotch, which definitely made her think dirty thoughts,

“I want to make a mess of you.” Matt grinned, and she knew that grin, and fuck if she wasn’t dripping wet just from that look and that tone of voice. It was Pavlovian at this point. He dropped to his knees in front of her, his eyes never leaving hers, and she’d forgotten she was wearing a skirt until he pushed it up, then he was eating her out through the damp patch of fabric covering her pussy, able to nip just a bit harder because of it, and it felt like he had her coming very quickly. He hadn’t even needed to put fingers inside her or move the fabric to really get at her pussy.

“Oh my god. You are too fucking good at that.” She gasped as she caught her breath on the other side of her orgasm. 

“No such thing as being too good at making you feel good.”   
“Come here.” She encouraged, tugging gently on his hair to get him to kneel up. She pulled him into a kiss, his body slotting between her legs, and she moved a hand to his crotch, only to realize that his fly was open and his dick was out, but he wasn’t fully hard which was surprising. “Matt? Did you…” She looked down, and she giggled but fuck if that wasn’t painfully hot. He’d jerked off while doing that.  
“You sound and taste and smell amazing.” Matt admitted unashamedly.

“Mm. Remind me to clean the floor later.” She pulled him into another kiss, grabbing his ass to pull him tightly against her and also because she just liked grabbing his ass. His hands were wandering over her body, and finally one of them snaked between them to edge aside the fabric at her crotch and his fingers slid through her wetness though he didn’t slip them inside her. 

“I want you to fuck me right now.” She announced, pulling back from the kiss. She could feel he was getting hard again, hard and leaking against her. Matt’s refractory period was usually more like 10-15 minutes (still pretty good for a guy in his late thirties, Sylvie figured) for a second round, but today, apparently he was reliving his younger years.

“I love it when you get bossy.” Matt grinned, and he kissed her again, his tongue invading her mouth, pushing her back on the bed, and then he was on top of her, and her legs instinctively wrapped around his hips. At the same time she felt his fingers fully pull aside the fabric at her crotch, and then his not-quite-fully-hard-yet cock was at her entrance and he was pushing inside and she couldn’t stop a tiny yelp as he thrust hard into her. 

“Syl?” Matt asked as he pulled out, which was exactly what she didn’t want, damn it. “Shit, babe, I’m sorry-“  
“Don’t apologize.” She kissed him, hard, to shut him up. “I want you to fuck me open, Matt. I want to feel it, Matt. Fuck. Me. Hard.”  
“Sylvie-“  
“Hey.” She reached around to smack his ass as hard as she could (which really, was just hard enough to get his attention good and proper considering the angle she was at). “I think I just gave you an order, soldier.”  
“Fuck, you know…” Matt groaned, and yes, she did know how much it turned him on when she got commanding. Matt really loved a bossy woman. Sylvie was finding out just how much she liked being ‘commanding’ too – other men in her life hadn’t really encouraged her to be in charge in the bedroom. It wasn't that Matt was submissive, really, he just loved her being in charge and telling him exactly what she wanted and how she wanted it. 

“Fuck. Me.” She repeated, and she grabbed his cock and placed it at her pussy again. He was grinning as he pushed inside again, and it really was a tight fit but it felt somewhere past fantastic too as he moved swiftly in and out of her, going slightly deeper with each thrust.

“You’re so tight, I’m not gonna last.” Matt admitted.

“You keep that up, yes, right that…there…that angle, yes, fuck,” Sylvie gasped, “don’t worry about, fuck, I’m gonna be there, too.”  
“How’re you so fucking perfect?” Matt asked, almost to himself, and he was moving faster now, his rhythm slightly erratic as he clearly went chasing his own orgasm. It was fine with her because he was going to get her there anyway, she was so wound up today, and his fingers found her clit and she might’ve screamed a little as she came apart on his cock. She heard him curse and felt his cock jerk inside her as he came. It took a couple minutes, but eventually he pulled back and pulled out, smiling at her tiredly but clearly happily. 

“Can I talk you into an afternoon nap?”  
“After that?” Sylvie asked with a light laugh. “I _need_ a nap. And since you did this to me, you better stay here and play body pillow, mister.”

Matt chuckled, and kissed her.

“How about we undress, though?” He proposed.

“I can’t put my pajamas on in the afternoon.” Sylvie shook her head.

“I will never,” Matt winked at her as he stood and peeled himself out of all his clothes, except his underwear which he readjusted to put his dick back inside, “complain about having you naked in my bed, so pajamas are entirely optional.”  
“Matt Casey.” She joined him in shucking out of her clothes quickly, then slipping back into his bed for the promised afternoon nap. They’d had a busy shift, a little nap really wouldn’t go awry, she figured, as he slid in next to her. “You better not think that this is a promise of more sex when we wake up.”  
“I would never.” Matt spooned up behind her, pressing his incredibly warm front against her back from basically knee to shoulders. She laughed, because while he’d never actually presume anything like that, she knew that if they slept like this she’d wake up to a serious case of ‘morning wood’ even if it was nowhere near morning. At least, if they napped for more than an hour. 

“You might not, but little Matt will.”  
“He takes offense at being called little.” Matt teased, his lips at her ear. His hips pushed into her ass gently.

“I thought we were sleeping.”  
“We are. But he’s offended now, he wants an apology.”  
“Hmm.” She reached back to grab what she could of Matt’s butt sliding her hand along its curve fondly. “Tell him I’ll apologize later, let him prove he’s not little. Later.”  
“He and I are both going to hold you to that.” Matt replied, kissing her neck softly. He sighed a little, and she could feel him sort of snuggling into the bed. She thought it was absolutely adorable that he did that, like he was burrowing in to sleep. She had to be stupidly in love, he had so many little quirks and she found all of them endearing and adorable at this point. His voice was already getting sleepy. “You smell good. Better than usual. New shampoo?"  
”New conditioner.” She answered, as she let herself start to doze off as well. She took the muttered response into her neck that might’ve been ‘I like it’ as approval of her choice. She didn’t really need his approval, of course, but it was nice to have it, and she made a vague mental note that apparently he liked the ‘tropical’ citrusy smells.


	13. A Casey(ish) Wedding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two parts posted today were initially one chapter, but the smutty second part got long enough, I separated them because I think the shorter chapters read a bit more easily in many people's time constraints.

Sometimes, and Sylvie has no delusions she’s alone at all in this, family makes her insane. Her own parents can be old-fashioned and a little too conservative and complete buttinskis. Her brother was a bit of a know-it-all and overly-competitive. She figured those were typical complaints. She barely knew Matt’s family, but his also now had the power to make her mildly insane. His mother’s wedding was making Matt insane, which second-hand made her insane. Sure, it was a nice change to be borrowing someone else’s drama now, but she wanted no drama. No drama, just work on their new house and the usual routine of calls on shift, and the chance to enjoy an actual Chicago spring. Instead, here they were, driving out to Homewood to a wedding Matt didn’t even really want to attend, that she was pretty sure he wished was not happening at all, and he’d spent a lot of time convincing his sister to attend as well. Violet was bringing her boyfriend. So was Christie. For that matter, Sylvie supposed, so was Matt. Well, his girlfriend obviously. The general consensus they'd all reached was at least this way they made up an entire table and didn't have to be subjected to any of Nancy's and Randy's friends or Randy's relatives. 

She knew it was going to be a pretty small event as weddings went, not tiny, but small. Nancy had said it would be mostly Randy’s family. Matt had quietly explained later that that was because most of his mom’s family hadn’t even spoken to her since she killed his dad. Apparently, Randy’s first marriage had not been quite as acrimoniously ended as Nancy’s but then, it would be hard to beat ‘I shot him in the face’ for an ending. She sort of winced, even in her head that sounded really rude about what she knew still troubled Matt deeply. She knew Matt needed therapy. She was pretty sure everyone but Matt knew Matt needed therapy, he'd had enough trauma to justify it for sure, but Matt was not going to be open to that suggestion. He was so compassionate to others and so damned hard on himself, like he shouldn't need help getting over his guilt and all the other complex emotions tied up in his relationship with his mother and his father's death, and probably just his relationship with his father in general. He'd never judge anyone else for going to a therapist, but he would totally judge himself for it, because sometimes Matt was stupid. And frustrating. And tonight was going to just make him feel worse unless she, and Christie, and Violet distracted him. 

“Something wrong?” Matt asked, he must’ve seen her expression as he parked his truck (he insisted on taking his truck for some reason) outside the country club. He’d shaken his head for weeks about his mother getting married at a golf course. Sylvie was learning that her boyfriend was a lot more Catholic than he let on at least about some things – he didn’t seem to have much guilt about the premarital sex and living together bits – but she hadn’t pointed out that his first wedding was in a judge’s chambers and they’d tried to do it without even any witnesses. So he couldn’t really say much, she thought, but she was not going to bring up his wedding to Gabby any time soon. She was starting to get the impression he had had some reservations about their marriage from the start, but he'd not said as much (she wondered how much he'd even really admitted it to himself). She also wasn't going to bring up her thoughts about his need for therapy to deal with his relationship with his mother. 

“I was just wondering how awkward this will be.” Sylvie admitted to another concern more readily. “I mean, have you even met Randy’s kids or anything?”  
“This is the fourth time I’ll have been in the same room as Randy, so no, I haven’t met his kids. Christie still hasn’t met him at all. I’m surprised I was able to convince her to come.”  
“It’s good. Good for your mom, and maybe for Christie, to start…trying to put things behind her?” Sylvie tried but that didn’t feel quite right.

“It’s hard to put ‘she killed Dad’ behind her.” Matt replied. “Mom is just, I don’t know, I don’t understand her. I’m not sure I ever have.”  
“But I’m sure you and Christie both want her to be happy, right?”  
“Of course I do.” Matt agreed. “I just hope she _stays_ happy.”

“We didn’t miss a rehearsal because of shift, did we?” Sylvie asks, because she doesn’t really know what to expect from today. They hadn’t been invited to a rehearsal, at least, not that she knew about.

“No. I think they had a little run-through with the witnesses yesterday or something but it’s supposed to be a short simple ceremony. Not much to rehearse.”  
“Open bar?” She asked because that might be essential.

“Oh, yeah. I even offered to pay for it.” Matt laughed as they headed into the clubhouse. “Did you think I had some other reason for telling you to pack an overnight bag, we had a hotel room? I already checked with the country club staff, I can leave my truck and we can Uber to the hotel. But I was thinking, between the ceremony and the reception we’ve got about thirty or forty minutes while Mom and Randy do a receiving line and pictures, we can skip the hors d’oeuvres and go check in, Uber back here, that way our bags are already there.”  
“I had wondered, I mean, it’s not that long a drive that we had to stay overnight.”  
“Besides, I think a night away, in a nice hotel room, might be just what we need.”  
“Sounds good.” Sylvie agreed.

“Uncle Matt! You made it!” They turned to see Violet moving quickly towards them, probably as quickly as a girl that age usually moved in shoes that high. She wasn’t wobbly like she wasn’t used to heels, she just seemed like maybe heels that high were a little new to her. Then again, at any age, you never really could run in heels. Matt hugged his niece warmly, lifting her off her feet a little.

“Hey, sweetie, how’re you?”

“Mom bribed me to come – I got a new dress and heels. Plus, I got to bring my boyfriend, Daniel, so I’d at least have someone to talk to who wasn’t you or Mom. Or Sylvie. Hi Sylvie!”

“Hi, Violet. I love your dress.” It really was a cute sundress for a girl her age, it didn’t look too little girl or like she was trying too hard to be older than she was. It also showed that Violet was starting to get more serious curves to her and now a boyfriend. Yep, Matt was going to worry about that now, too. He was so adorably over-protective, especially of Violet, who he talked to a lot more than he did his sister. 

“Yours is so much cooler than mine.” Violet smiled brightly. “Mom would never let me wear anything like that.”  
“You think your mom is bad, imagine your uncle Matt’s reaction.” Sylvie teased lightly.

“That’s hypocritical, Uncle Matt.” Violet pointed out.

“Yep.” Matt nodded. “I still think _you’re_ the same little girl who peed all over me when you were three. I definitely do not think of Sylvie as a little girl.”  
“Ugh. Please don’t bring that up, Daniel is coming over.” Violet looked behind her. Indeed, a teenage boy was walking up to them, looking a little nervous. “He’s super nice, Uncle Matt, he’s in the Squash Club and the science club with me, and he’s on the varsity water polo team. I really like him, so be nice. Please.”  
“Why wouldn’t I be nice?”  
“Mom says you were awful to her boyfriends when she was my age.”  
“I was eleven years old when she was your age. I think I’ve grown up a little since then.”  
“Mom says mostly you’re just taller.” Violet shook her head, then shrieked a little as Matt reached to tickle her, pulling her into his side. “Uncle Matt stop! You can’t mess up my outfit or my hair!”

“Oh, no, never the hair.” Matt laughed, but released her. Violet smiled and gestured for the boy, who’d stopped a few feet away, to come over.

“Uncle Matt, this is my boyfriend, Daniel. Daniel this is my uncle Matt and his girlfriend Sylvie.”  
“Nice to meet you Daniel.” Matt held out a hand, and although he looked a little terrified, Daniel gamely shook it, and smiled at Sylvie at least.

“Hi.”  
“Violet, has your mom been telling this kid horrible stories about me? Seems nervous.”  
“No, it’s just Mr. Jordan said you’re…and you’re kind of, uhm, a little scary.”  
“He is not.” Violet rolled her eyes. “Uncle Matt is really awesome. I told you. Let’s go outside, look around or something.”  
“Be back by-“  
“I know, I won’t be late, Uncle Matt.” She grabbed her boyfriend’s hand, and they headed outside to ostensibly enjoy the sunny weather and probably just to get away from all the ‘adults’.

“I remember my first boyfriend. I was fifteen, too.”  
“Huh.” Matt looked at her. “I can see that, though, bet you had all the boys after you. Prettiest girl in school.”  
“No way, and I was so shy back then – most of the boys liked Hope better, or one of the more outgoing girls.” Sylvie tugged at his tie playfully. “What about you? I bet you were the cutest boy in school.”  
“I was completely hopeless and awkward with girls until senior year - hence, the mess with Mrs. Garvin spring of junior year, I thought I was going to die a virgin. Aintin Jo said something about I had to grow into my features, which never made sense to me. She didn’t even know me until I was seventeen, though. Ask Christie, she’ll tell you, I was _not_ the guy the girls all had crushes on.” Matt paused, wrinkling his nose. “At least I wasn’t in the squash club or play water polo.”  
“Those are sports. He’s athletic.” Sylvie reminded him.   
“I guess. He couldn't play one normal sport, like hockey or baseball or football? Soccer? Even tennis?" Matt shook his head. "She’s fifteen, it’ll probably be over in six months anyway, right?”  
“Probably. I only know two, three, couples that are still married to the person they dated freshman year of high school.” Sylvie smiled at him, kissing him softly. “Is your Auntie Jo going to be here, you never said?”  
“Uh, no, why would she?”  
“Well, I don’t know which side of the family she’s from.”  
“Neither.” Matt looked confused.

“But she’s your aunt.”  
“She’s not my _aunt_. I thought I’d mentioned, I lived with her my senior year.”  
“No, you did, but you call her Auntie Jo.”  
“Aintin. Not Auntie.”  
“Okay, and the difference is?” Sylvie was quite confused now.   
“One is Irish, and it’s sort of a nickname for an interfering busybody female loved one, even if she isn’t actually sister to your parent.” Matt explained. “I’ll fill you in sometime, but she’s not related to me. She just runs a foster home for teenagers no one else wants, well, ones with Irish names anyway.”  
“Only Irish names?”  
“Only Irish Catholics.” Matt laughed for some reason. “Of course, to Aintin Jo, if you’re not Catholic, you’re not Irish. She’s from Derry, has some strong feelings about being Irish.”  
“I’m confused. You were a foster kid?”  
“Yeah. I thought you knew. I mean, I was sure I’d talked about it - I had a case worker, all of it. I was sixteen when my dad died, Mom went to prison. None of the family would take me, well, not after...summer after junior year, I ended up in foster care. Aintin Jo and her husband, they took in all the good Irish kids they could, long as they had what she called the Irish fighting spirit. Teach us to be fighters in the right ways, she says.”

“Well, I definitely need to hear more about this, but, I think we should probably head in, find Christie and everything.” It was getting close to the time they'd been asked to arrive, anyway.

The actual wedding itself took less than ten minutes, Sylvie figured. It was a nice little ceremony, she supposed, and she’d been to these non-religious short weddings before, but this one felt rather perfunctory even for that. Maybe it was the second-marriage thing. Either way, she was kind of grateful for it, and that Nancy wanted her family’s photo done first. Sylvie was not invited into the photo, because she wasn’t ‘family’, but at least she was in plentiful company with Jason (Christie’s boyfriend) and Daniel. Daniel was a lot less nervous when Matt was farther away, he had no problem with Jason it seemed. Jason was clearly less intimidated by his girlfriend’s brother, but then, he’d already met Matt a few times. As soon as the picture was taken, they all went over to the little boutique hotel in a historic bank building and checked in. Violet was staying with Jason and Christie, but Daniel’s parents were going to come pick him up that night apparently. Sylvie tried not to laugh at Matt's blatant approval, as if he'd been worried that fifteen-year-olds were going to be permitted to spend the night together or something. Randy’s family also had rooms there. They hustled back to the country club after dropping their overnight bags in the room, not wanting to be late for dinner (and drinks).

She and Matt were basically at their own table with Jason, Christie, Daniel, and Violet. At least it made conversation easy, since they all knew each other. Daniel seemed to be finding a bit more ease with Matt as there was actual conversation. Matt also relaxed as both everything continued to go without any major scenes (she wasn’t exactly sure what he was expecting) and he finished his second scotch. The food was pretty good, her chicken was tasty and Matt’s tortellini carbonara was not lasting very long so he must approve. Mostly, conversation was light and focused on the Caseys catching up with one another. Halfway through his tortellini, she remembered why she loved and hated to watch Matt eat pasta. He had this habit of getting all the sauce off the tortellini before he chewed – it wasn’t particularly noticeable unless you really watched him eat, but once you saw it, it was hard to ignore the truly diabolical things he did with his tongue to get every bit of carbonara sauce off the tortellini. It was even harder to ignore when you’d personally experienced the diabolical things he could do with his tongue in pursuit of _other_ goals.

After dinner, and another scotch, she was able to convince Matt to dance with her. He really wasn’t bad at it at all, though given the age of the bride and groom perhaps it wasn’t surprising that there wasn’t exactly any “club paced” music he had to try to dance to either. She loved being held close to him like this. The heat of him and the smell of that damned (perfect) cologne of his, and just moving together like this, it was romantic and sexy – and it didn’t hurt how nice he looked in a suit, either. He danced with Violet as well, and Sylvie had danced with Daniel, discretely trying to help him past the ‘hold her hips and step left then right’ dancing that was typical of boys his age (and some men never got beyond it, she swore). Matt danced with Nancy a couple times as well, though he was smiling in a way that Sylvie knew was mostly faked for the second one – she figured Nancy had said something, because the first one he’d seemed genuinely pleased to be able to dance with her. She wondered what it must’ve been like for him, to start imagining his wedding with Hallie and think about the fact that he wouldn’t have any family there, he couldn’t dance with his mother or his sister or his niece, and here he was – granted not at his own wedding, but at a wedding – doing just that. At least he had that, now. They were polite to Randy’s kids, who weren’t exactly anxious and eager to get to know Nancy’s kids either apparently so that was easy enough. It was an enjoyable evening, all in all, and Nancy looked very happy, which was the main goal. The reception broke up by nine o'clock, and Sylvie could finally have an excuse to take Matt back to their hotel room without seeming inappropriate or rude. 


	14. Post-Wedding Activities

She had headed straight for the bathroom when they got back to the hotel room. She had make-up to remove and a nice dress with appropriate undergarments on beneath it to remove after all. Matt, stupidly perfectly shaped as he was, didn’t need any ‘shape wear’ to help him fill out a dress (well, his suit) _exactly_ right. It wasn’t that late, but after Daniel’s parents picked him up, Christie, Jason, and Violet had announced they were going to take advantage of the hotel’s pool. She and Matt had begged off, preferring some quiet time upstairs. Christie teased that it was code for ‘Matt wants to watch the White Sox game’ but he hadn’t actually turned the game on from what she could hear. When Sylvie came out of the bathroom dressed in her pajamas, she stopped to admire the view presented to her.

Matt’s face was buried in the pillow, the sheets covering only from the waist down which left his muscular back bare to view. He wasn’t asleep yet, but he did look like he was dozing. She slipped onto the bed carefully, straddling his hips. He stretched a little, so she knew he was aware of her, and he twisted his head to smile up at her sleepily. Altering her previous plans slightly, she slid her hands gently from waist to shoulders, leaning forward to whisper in his ear.

“You look like you could use a back rub, Matt.” He hummed a little, arching into her hands like a cat. For a man whom Kelly accused of being terrified of a masseuse the one time, years ago, they’d talked him into one to ‘help him de-stress’ (Kelly’s retelling of Matt’s one-and-only massage was hilarious, and included Matt’s statement that he was more stressed when he left than when he got there), he loved her half-way decent attempts at back massages. She rubbed her hands along his back slowly, gradually increasing the pressure from feather-light to gentle massage. He moaned a wordless appreciation for her attention, stretching a bit beneath her hands which set the muscles rippling nicely. She loved that, to see and feel the strength in him so very blatantly physically present. She sat back, putting her weight on his thighs as she kept her hands gently massaging his back but also leaned in low to kiss the juncture of back and neck lightly.

“Sylvie…” He groaned, trying to roll beneath her but her weight successfully stalled his admittedly light attempt.

“Shh.” She quieted him, wanting a chance to do this. She let her hands settle on the bottom of his shoulder blades, the thumbs brushing lightly over the skin stretched taught over his spine. He pressed down into the mattress, although she had no doubt it _wasn’t_ because he wanted to get away from her. She trailed kisses down his spine, her hands moving slightly to caress his sides as she replaced her thumbs with her lips. He had this wonderful spot between his shoulders that made him crazy, her hands there turned him on, but her mouth there was a sure-fire way to get him hot _fast_.

“Sylvie.” He groaned again, sounding more awake, rolling his shoulders so as to expand her access to his back, even if only minutely. She ran her tongue back and forth across the mid-line of his back, right over the spine, while dropping open mouthed kisses where she could. She gradually moved down his back, loving every hum and groan that she was able to elicit. Eventually she reached the waistband of his boxers, shoving the sheets down as low as she could without moving herself. It wasn’t the most comfortable position she’d ever been in, but she managed to scrunch herself so that she could drop wet kisses against the hollow where the sacral curve met the lumbar curve, right between his dimples of venus. She sat back up, and moved her attentions back up along his back towards his shoulders. Her hands slid up and down his back, massaging as she could, occasionally dipping low to brush the top of his butt, right at the waistband of his boxers.

“Sylvie.” He sounded vaguely uncomfortable as she moved back to concentrate on the space between his shoulder blades that covered the T7 vertebrae, then just the tiniest way above that. He tensed, every muscle in his back tightening as he arched back, and he barely quieted a sharp groan that might have been her name. She caught his hands before he could brace himself on the bed to push up and dislodge her from his back -- although she suspected that Matt could still easily overpower her if he was truly motivated to do so. He could do pushups with one of the guys on his back, let alone her on his hips: if he wanted to move her, she was going to be moved.

“Let me.” She whispered, leaning in close to his ear again. While she was there, she nibbled at it slightly, before kissing and nibbling down the available side of his neck, slowly making her way back to that spot once more. She loved that spot. It was like she knew the secret of getting him to open up, like saying ‘open sesame’ when you were a little kid. When she played with that spot -- with palms, fingers, lips, or whatever, and he relaxed into what was clearly a _spot_ for him, and behind him at that, he was letting her in, letting her touch him where he couldn’t see her, couldn’t take control of things. He trusted her. Today, she wanted to enjoy that trust and knowledge of his body. After a few minutes, knowing how turned on he was, she stopped her back massage efforts. She sat back, lifting most of her weight off his thighs, unsurprised when he turned beneath her, carefully keeping her own balance despite his maneuvering.

“You know how I feel about a back rub.”

“I do indeed.” She leaned in, pressing her chest to his for a deep kiss that quickly became fairly lewd as his tongue pushed into her mouth to duel with her own. She was reminded again, if only briefly, of why it made no sense that he had ever lacked female companionship. He was hot, and he was damn good at this. He knew how to make a kiss not only hot, but a promise of much, much hotter things to come. She ran her hands over his chest possessively, enjoying the play of muscle beneath her fingertips. Just to tease him a bit further, she let her right hand dip lower, tracing lightly through the trail of hair that directed her still further down his body to slip underneath the waist of his boxers. She went no further than that, just letting her fingers caress the sensitive skin there.

“Off.” He demanded, slipping his hands to the bottom of her tank top. She firmly grabbed his wrists, pushing them away from her to pin against the mattress over his head, sort of like half a jumping jack.

“I have plans for you tonight. No hands, mister.”  
“ Sylvie?” He asked, but his eyes went just that bit blacker, arousal expanding the pupil, and she leaned in to kiss him again. She kept it short, smiling at him.

“I’m going to have my way with you.”  
“You usually do.”  
“Keep your hands right there.”  
“ Sylvie?”  
“Stay right like this. You are not to move a muscle, Matt Casey.”  
“Fuck, Sylvie.” He clearly didn’t mind the order, as he kept his hands where he had been directed to do, and she knew that tone of voice, she could feel the prominent bulge in the front of his boxers. She had to admit, he made a gorgeous picture. The position showed off the muscles of his chest and arms beautifully.

“Do you have any idea how hot you look like this?” She asked, running her hands up his sides and over his chest possessively. She played idly with the hair across his chest, always a somewhat heavier texture than it looked because he was blond, and she let her fingers wander south to tease at his ‘treasure trail’ too. Then she slid her hands up again, ghosting over his pecs and tweaking his nipples lightly.

“ Sylvie.” He complained softly, as her hands slid up both sides of his neck, fingers eventually getting lost in his hair, which really was as soft as it looked. Knowing what he wanted, and not really wanting to tease him overmuch, she used her grip in his hair to hold him steady as she leaned forward to kiss him heavily. His mouth opened willingly beneath hers, and her tongue dove in to twine around his. She very gently ran her tongue along the roof of his mouth, and she felt his cock jerk against her as she swallowed his groan. Abandoning his mouth, she kissed along his jaw, nipping lightly at his ear before making her way down his neck, applying her teeth lightly so she’d not leave a mark but he could still feel a little bit of sharpness. He liked being marked a little, got a thrill from what he considered little marks of her ownership (and/or his success at making her come that hard, depending on why she marked him), but they were both far too old for him to have visible hickeys at work. So she waited until she was past the point where the t-shirts he wore as a contractor or his uniform shirts would cover before she started to let her teeth sink in deeper. His shoulders were fair game, and she trailed hard little bites along them, reveling in his obvious pleasure. Before she’d started sleeping with Matt, she’d never really liked being even the littlest bit rough with her partner, but he loved it when she was aggressive and forceful, and she was learning to love their play at her controlling him (it was always play, she had not had to learn how physically strong he was, she knew he let her 'pin' him). She found that spot at his collarbone, another little quirk of his, and bit down, spurred by her own thoughts, wanting to leave a mark that she would know was there, and he would know was there, even if no one else saw it.

“AHH, fuck!” He jerked beneath her, but she held her seat well, and left a trail of smaller – though still sharp – bites down his chest. She diverted from her path to pay attention to his nipples, though she didn’t stay long because they were more points of fascination for her than genuine hotspots for him. She shifted her body downwards, letting her tongue and teeth slide down the straight line from the middle of his chest to his belly-button. She dipped her tongue in lightly, enjoying the slightly stronger taste of him that was the result of the natural small pool of sweat that gathered there, then bit down hard again just below and to the right of his navel. She let up for just a moment, feeling his cock twitch again, before she bit down again, even just that little bit harder, on the same spot. He groaned loudly, arching into her. Slipping her fingers into the waistband of his boxers, she slipped them down his hips, aided by his lifting his butt from the mattress. Moving off him, ignoring his groan of impatience, she slipped his boxers off his legs and took a moment to enjoy seeing his cock swollen and stiff against his lower abdomen. He was well-endowed, she’d known that intimately for a while now, but she still got a little thrill to see him in full glory, so to speak.

“Sylvie. Are you looking or doing?”  
“You have a great cock, it’s nice to look at.” She remarked, sliding up the bed to look him in the eye. He still blushed, though it was hardly the first time she’d mentioned it, and she loved that about him. Matt was a startling and sometimes unpredictable mix of modesty and utter hedonism. In the bedroom, he had very few ‘hang-ups’ that she’d found, and no shame whatsoever in liking what he liked (as long as she was into it, too). Without looking away from his eyes, she ran the fingertips of her right hand ever-so-gently up the underside of his shaft, then circled it to gently stroke downwards, finishing what the natural growth of his erection had started and pulling the foreskin back to fully expose the glans. That he was uncut had been a bit of an adjustment at first, but she loved it now (maybe she just loved everything about _him_ ). She ran the pad of her thumb over the glans lightly, knowing that he was really sensitive to the first few touches. He bucked up into her, harder this time, but obediently otherwise stayed where she’d told him to. Stretched out alongside him as she was now, she ran her hand up his abdomen and over his chest, and then pulled him into another long and heavy kissing session. Wanting to feel his thigh against her, aching for some sort of contact to her own most sensitive areas, she moved to straddle his leg, and thrust experimentally against him.

“I like you like this. Naked, spread across my bed...totally mine.” She thrust against him again, feeling not only the muscles of his thigh straining against the apex of her legs, but also his balls and the underside of his cock brushing against the top of her right thigh.

“Sylvie. Please.”

“I could keep you here, like this, forever.” She sighed, meeting his eyes directly in order to convey how genuinely she sometimes wanted to do that. Of course, she couldn’t really, he could move anytime he wanted to. Plus, real life meant they had to leave bed quite regularly. “Keep you hot and hard and begging for me, just like this.” She thrust again, a few in rapid succession, enjoying the friction of thigh and the seam of her shorts against her.

“Please. Fuck, Sylvie.”

“Please, what? Come on, baby, tell me what you want.”

“Clothes, off.”

“Your clothes _are_ off.”  
“Yours aren’t.” He groaned as she thrust again, arching up into her. “Want to see your tits. Want you to ride me.”  
“Ask and ye shall receive.” She replied, kissing him lightly, once, before pulling back to quickly remove her clothes. She was ready to be naked against him, too. She straddled him again, as soon as she was completely naked, settling directly over his erection and feeling the shaft slide wetly between her outer lips and press just a little against her clit. She leaned forward, kissing him deeply while pressing her chest against his and beginning to thrust her hips lightly. Her movements made his cock slide hotly against her, while her tits brushed against his strong chest. It felt amazing on her end, and he certainly seemed to be enjoying the slide of their bodies together as well. He began to thrust in a complementary rhythm, and the friction against her clit made her groan and work harder in reply. She soon tired of this, good as it felt she wanted more, and she knew he did too. She’d made him wait long enough, and she was suddenly impatient too, and without even thinking about it, she grabbed his cock, positioned it appropriately, and thrust down onto it, taking the majority of it on the first go, feeling that too-sharp stretch a second too late. You’d think she’d remember that even this fucking wet some stretching was needed to avoid it hurting, he was so fucking thick. Still, it was worth it, his reaction to her going so quickly.

“Fuck, Sylvie.” He threw his head back, exposing the length of his throat to her, and she couldn’t resist such a blatant invitation to nip at the expanse of sensitive skin. At the base, just where neck met chest, she bit down again, eliciting another groan of her name, and she moved her hips just a little at first, adjusting to the fantastic size of him (but yeah, she was gonna be sore tomorrow for sure, that was too fast, Sylvie). Finally, she sat up, bracing her hands against his chest, and concentrated on riding him fast and hard, hurtling towards her orgasm as she managed – after sufficient stretching of her pussy – to take the full length and width of him inside her. This brought her clit into full contact with his pubic bone, every single movement, and she was flying towards an explosion. She threw her own head back, every ounce of her thought and energy on the rhythm between their two pelvises, climbing and climbing and climbing and each little plateau felt like it might be the one to send her over the edge but she just kept climbing. He felt so perfect inside her, like he was made for her, and she knew she was getting louder as she just kept climbing. God, she was tempted to let him move his arms (fuck he was beautifully obedient, keeping right where she’d put him) just so he could play with her clit. She didn’t know if it was pleasure, anticipation or frustration that was making her loud, or if it was a combination of all three, but she somehow increased her efforts, and then without further warning she was there and coming and crashing and screaming and her world was nothing outside the completely overwhelming fire of nerves and the feel of her entire body she was certain pulsing around him and trying to somehow take more of him. It felt like forever, was probably just a few moments, long beautiful excruciatingly pleasurable moments, before she collapsed against his chest, her hips still half-thrusting as she twitched from the residual strength of her release. Each twitch made his pubic hair brush against her clit, which made her jerk against him again, and the cycle almost hurt as her nerves were shot from her orgasm. God, he was so deep and it felt good but almost too full now, a little pain to the pleasure, but she couldn’t quite marshal the energy to move off of him. She was so spaced, it took his shifting kind of heavily beneath her to bring her attention back to him. He was still hard inside her, breathing incredibly hard underneath her ear, and she pushed back from his chest to stare down at him. His head was thrown back, his back arched and his arms looked strained from the effort of…something, maybe just staying exactly where he’d been put. He was still hard, completely hard, and she realized he hadn’t quite come – though she knew he was close from the posture of his body.

“ Sylvie, for fuck’s sake. _Please_.” He was looking up at her now, and she smiled down at him, circling her hips gently. Too much friction was uncomfortable for her, she was still too sensitive, but she didn’t really want to end this with her hand or her mouth (not that she could fit him in her mouth once he was this hard, so she never felt like that was a ‘fair’ ending for him, basically a wet handjob). He groaned, she could tell he was painfully close but this wasn’t quite enough to push him over the edge. “Please. Sylvie, please, faster, fuck me.”

She pushed down onto him as far as she could, ignoring the scream of over-used nerve endings, and increased the pace again. He didn’t last much longer, maybe a minute, before he thrust up against her and held it, his cock expanding slightly just that instant before she felt the familiar arrhythmic jerks of his cock that signified his orgasm. Finally, his body went limp beneath her, though his cock was still pretty much erect inside her (he took longer to go soft than he did to get hard). He looked as exhausted and happily sated as she felt. Her musings on the perfection of his cheekbones – prompted no doubt by her current post-orgasmic state – ended when she realized that the shifting of his shoulders was discomfort from not moving his arms.

“You can move your arms, Matt.” She smiled at him, kissing him warmly. He chuckled, pulling her tightly against him, wrapping his arms around her.

“I didn’t want you to yell at me, so I thought I’d better wait for permission.”  
“Was that…okay?”  
“It was hot as fuck, I loved it.” Matt assured her, kissing her again. “I love it when you get all bossy. But next time you tell me a back rub is only a back rub, you can’t blame my dick for taking interest – you’re encouraging his bad behavior.”  
“Oh, I think I know how to handle ‘him’ by now.” She chuckled, cuddling into his side. She was tired now, and just wanted to sleep. The mixture of the post-orgasm hormones and the alcohol was a happy but potent mix. 


	15. A Weekend Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying out a bit of illustrations in this chapter - in case someone needs some help imagining the setting.

The week after Nancy’s wedding was a bit crazy. Matt had been assigned from the CFD to attend a volunteer and combination fire department conference downstate, and he was leaving for that on Wednesday morning. He had spent every spare minute at the house, talking with the subcontractors doing the work – including the new deck on the back, as well as a new roof and new door for the garage, and a new roof on the house as well. Not that he had a lot of spare minutes, since he also had to prepare his presentation at the conference, which was some sort of ‘how to be a proper truckie without specific truckie training'. It was going to include practical demonstrations – well, no actual fires, but apparently there was a recently-burned structure he was taking his class to in order to show some of overhaul and stuff. He’d been asked to do it a few weeks back, and Sylvie was really impressed with what he’d put together given he was filling in for the original CFD representative (whoever that was, he hadn’t said). Matt was nervous, visibly nervous, which was strange. He’d never taught anyone anything, though, which he kept saying and everyone in the firehouse kept shooting him the same ‘Casey, you’ve lost your fucking mind’ looks because he’d had at least a half-dozen candidates on Truck 81, which was one of the busiest trucks in the city. Kelly had finally told him to just do what he’d do with a candidate, only there’d be like 40 of them and he had four hours. Matt had gone with that plan, apparently, but was still nervous. She privately thought part of it was still his dislike of leaving 81 in the hands of a floater for two shifts (Friday and Monday).

The good part was that Matt had managed to convince Chief to let Sylvie have furlough for the following Monday, and since Matt was getting that day off as comp time (because, according to Chief, the CFD had taken one look at Matt's OT so far in 2020 and said ‘no more this month’ and it was a week into May), she was driving down on Saturday morning to join him at the conference. Well, the conference was ending Friday night with a dinner and social hour (aka drinking that would take a lot longer than an hour) so Matt’s hotel room was covered by the CFD through Saturday morning, then he’d said they needed a weekend away. She loved that idea. She’d never been to this state park before, but she’d read great things online and Matt had said he’d even arranged horseback riding for them nearby for Saturday afternoon. There were lots of hiking trails for them to choose from on Sunday, and with her off Monday, they were booked through Tuesday so whatever they didn’t conquer on Sunday they’d do Monday, like kayaking through the park (she’d never been kayaking) or touring some local wineries. Aside from his mom’s wedding, and their trip to Fowlerton, she’d never been on a trip with Matt. They were going to be in separate vehicles for this trip, since she had to work on Friday, but they’d still be together so that counted as a trip away. Their first trip away, really.

Matt left Wednesday directly after shift. The conference technically started Wednesday morning, but since he didn’t have to present until Thursday afternoon, CFD hadn’t approved a floater for Tuesday’s shift. She was actually pretty certain Matt hadn’t asked. It meant, though, that her last night with Matt for a few days was spent in the firehouse, which was no fun because they were apart. She wanted to cuddle with him since she was going to miss him the next few nights. She had to let him sleep, since he was driving the next day, otherwise she might have talked him into cuddling on the sofa instead of sleeping in separate bunks. So she already missed him before he was even really gone. He called from the lodge he was staying at, just to let her know that he was there safely, but he had to go do conference stuff. She reminded him that he had better call her on Thursday after his panel, or she was going drive out there and he’d be in big trouble. He laughed, but promised.

  
“Hey, babe, how’d it go?” She asked, answering the phone Thursday evening before the second ring even finished. Yes, she was anxious to hear his voice. It had been months since she hadn’t heard from him multiple times a day, and she didn’t like to think about those shifts he was at 29 and they didn’t speak for up to 24+ hours in a row. She was spoiled, she admitted it.

“It went well.” Matt admitted, sounding relieved. “Everything got here, so I didn’t forget anything, which was one of the worries. Transportation to the fire station and the burned structure all went smoothly, and no one got hurt trying out some of the overhaul techniques I showed them, so that’s all good. Most of them actually listened to me, too.”  
“Why wouldn’t they listen to you? You’re a decorated fire captain from the CFD and you’ve been an officer on a truck for more than a decade.”

“Well, only two of them muttered about me being too young, and only one said I looked like an actor hired for a recruitment poster, whatever that means, but mostly it was good. Good questions and good involvement. And I didn’t give anyone a heart attack on the aerial.”  
“What could be cardiac-incident-inducing on the aerial?”  
“I showed them a couple of maneuvers that require riding the aerial, you know, being on it while it moves. Some people don’t like the sensation.” Matt explained. “One of the chiefs there looked a little like he was white-knuckling it the whole time I was demonstrating from the end of it fully-extended. I was only five stories up, not even the full eight, it was angled, and I had four full points of contact so I don’t know why he seemed concerned.”  
“Uhm, because watching you hang out on the aerial while it swings around in mid-air is stressful, Matt.” She hated that, it always made her nervous. Matt was always so calm about it, and yes, the side railings were high, whatever, but he was still in the air on a moving apparatus and it made her nervous. She wasn’t a firefighter, she didn’t like ladders as much as he did, or heights. She wasn’t scared of heights, she just didn’t like to dangle from them. Matt had apparently no fear of heights whatsoever, two stories or eight stories, he was just as comfortable on the aerial.

“I was fine.”  
“You would say you’re fine if you severed a limb and were right now in some ER down there in…Oglesby, was it?”  
“There’s no hospital in Oglesby, trust me. It’s bigger than Fowlerton, but not by that much.” Matt laughed at her. “I’d be in Ottawa, I think, but I’m fine. I’m in my hotel room, actually. Just got out of the shower.”  
“Well, I am in the living room of my apartment, so you can just stop that right there.”  
“I said nothing.”  
“Sure. I know you Matt Casey.”  
“We’ve never had phone sex.” Matt pointed out.

“We’ve never needed to.” She replied. “How’s the conference going, besides your panel that I told you was going to be a great hit?”

“It’s good. I’m not going to learn much, but I don’t think that was the point. I think I’m here like…some sort of celebrity guest or something. The guy from CFD, he must have all the great stories, you know? Plus, Huffhines’ office sent my bio down and it’s like the biggest puff piece I’ve ever read.” Matt was laughing lightly. “So now I think half these guys think I’m like the patron saint of firefighting or something – Huffhines included that I nearly died saving a baby, and I jumped off a building into the river, and I got shot in a firehouse hostage situation, won medals, all that crap. He couldn’t just leave it at years on truck and with the CFD?”  
“His office does PR, Matt.” Sylvie pointed out. “They talk things up, it’s their job.”  
There was a pause, and she knew Matt had something more serious he wanted to say.

“You ever notice how many pictures people take now with all the phones having cameras?”  
“Oh, I’m sorry, Matt, that-“  
“I’m fine, I just…I don’t know. I didn’t freak out or anything, but I really wish people would ask before taking my picture.”  
“You can say that, you know.”  
“I don’t want to be rude.”  
“I think it’s safe to say it’s more rude to take someone’s picture without asking.” Sylvie pointed out, and she took the nod from Foster, the emphatic nod from Lily and the thumbs up from Otis and Cruz (who still came over to hang out sometimes when Chloe went out with her girlfriends) as agreement. “Everyone here - Lily, Otis, Foster and Cruz, all just backed me up on that.”  
“I can be more anonymous tomorrow, I have some panels to attend and a luncheon. Tonight I’m having dinner with a couple guys from the state office in Springfield and some of the organizers. I’m telling you, I feel like an honored guest not just some idiot who’s good with a halligan and an axe.”

“Well, you aren’t an idiot for one thing, though I can’t argue with good with a halligan and an axe. You’ll be fine, you always represent CFD very well.”

“I should probably go, need to finish getting ready for this dinner. I’ll try to call tomorrow, but you’re on shift so…we know how that goes. I love you, and I miss you.”  
“I miss you, too – Joe Cruz don’t even try to laugh at me, you are just as bad with Chloe – and I will see you Saturday around ten or ten-thirty, depends on traffic out of the city.”  
“I’m looking forward to it.”

She got puked on three different times on Friday’s shift, including twice in an hour. She had gotten permission from Chief to wear one of Matt’s spare t-shirts while they ran a load of laundry because that third shirt had been Foster’s spare. Chief didn’t even ask if she knew Matt’s locker combination because of course she did. It was way too big on her, but it smelled like him and it didn’t half turn her on. Three days without him and you’d think it had been three years or something. She was excited to do the activities they’d planned, but she was also pretty ready to just jump him. The shift was quiet for 81, he’d be happy to hear that, so the floater didn’t have many chances to mess anything up. She stopped by the house after shift on Saturday morning, just to take pictures of the progress, because he was going to ask, then she headed out of the city, southwest towards wherever Oglesby Illinois was, she was just following her phone’s directions really. It was just under a two hour drive, and she loved the lodge just from the outside. Figuring out the parking for overnight guests was a bit more challenging apparently a code was needed to get to that lot, so she pulled into the nearest lot for day-trippers and figured she’d move when she got checked in or got the code from Matt at least. She texted Matt as soon as she had the car parked. He sent back a quick thumbs up, and she got her bag from the trunk, then headed for the door that said ‘Lodge’ not ‘Restaurant’ because he hadn’t actually said where he was meeting her.

“Sylvie!” Never mind, there was Matt – his voice carried pretty well when he wanted it to. He waved, and she crossed the road but waited on the sidewalk outside the lodge. He halfway jogged up to her, and apparently he’d missed her, too because instead of hello how are you she got a pretty good kiss out of the deal. The slick jerk also used it as a distraction to slip her bag from her own shoulder to his because God forbid she carried her own bag. It was sweet. Unnecessary, but sweet.

“Which room are we in?” She asked, once he’d stepped back from her a little.

“Actually, we’re over in one of the cabin rooms. I thought you’d like being that little bit closer to nature. It’s just a room, not a full cabin, but it is straight out the door to the hiking trails.”  
“That’s perfect!” She kissed him again, in part out of excitement but in part to see that almost-shy smile he got when he realized he’d gotten it right (whatever it was) and she loved his plan (whatever it was). She loved this man, who held her hand like they were fifteen again as they walked, he always did that, and she hoped he never stopped because she loved it. They were halfway to the cabins (they really weren’t far from the lodge, she could see them just across the bridge over a creek) when she remembered, “oh, I need to move my car – so I can park in the lodge guests area, you need to give me the code.”

“If we’re driving to the horseback riding, we’ll just take your car and put it in the guest lot when we get back. We have a reservation in the restaurant at 7 pm, by the way, so we’ll need to leave the horseback riding place by probably 5 to get back and cleaned up.”  
“Sounds great.” She walked next to him, though they probably shouldn’t walk abreast and take up the whole sidewalk, the park was busy for before lunchtime. It was a beautiful day, though, already 70 degrees and sunny. She might’ve felt worse about taking up the whole sidewalk except the older couple who’d waited on the other side of the bridge for them took one look at their joined hands and grinned at her (Matt seemed oblivious). She smiled back, and had the wonderful flash of that being them in like thirty or forty years, still together and smiling to see young couples in love. Matt showed her into their cabin room, which really was kind of a normal hotel room just with its own little front porch and entry from outside, sharing a cabin building with what looked like three other rooms. He dropped her bag on a chair, then pulled her into his arms and kissed her again, this time much more seriously. She let herself get lost in the feeling of kissing him, sometimes it was like being drunk truly, and then it really was like being drunk because she was falling, well, never mind it was a guided fall, as Matt laid her on the mattress and followed her down. Despite the promising change in elevation, he kept his hands on top of her clothes and actually pulled her away from the buttons on his shirt. Well, he could usually be persuaded with more kissing, and she retreated a little, bringing her tongue back into her own mouth knowing he’d be lured in because Matt seemed unable to resist it no matter how often she did it, and sure enough, his tongue slipped in her mouth and she sucked for a second, then released, then sucked for a second, released, sucked for a second, and damn it, he pulled back, that was new.

“Shit, Sylvie.” He was panting on top of her, and she grabbed his ass with one hand and a good grip on his hair with the other, trying to bring his mouth back to hers. “We have plans.”  
“Vacation plans can always wait for sex. That’s why it’s vacation.” She kissed his neck, having had no success in encouraging his mouth to rejoin hers.

“Be strong, Matthew.” She heard him whisper to himself, and she almost laughed. If he was referring to himself by his full name, it must be serious. “Sylvie, we need to go.”  
“I missed you. And little Matt.”  
“He still doesn’t like being called ‘little’.” Matt teased back with a grin. He also stood up, bringing her with him and putting her back on her feet. How he did that from that angle, even with the little turn he did, she didn’t quite understand. One of the mysteries of having a strong guy whose job involved a lot of lifting humans and other large heavy things, she guessed.

“Horseback riding? What about lunch?”  
“There’s a local fast food place, called the Root Beer Stand, comes recommended on the way over to the ranch or whatever.” Matt replied, handing her what was clearly a room key. Not that she planned on going anywhere without him, but still nice to have she supposed.

“I do love root beer.” Sylvie admitted with a laugh. They went outside, and she took just a moment to bask in the sunshine. It had been a pretty rainy spring. A random thought popped into her head, and the question was out of her mouth before she could think, “Matt, have you ever even seen a horse?”  
“Of course I have.” He sounded a little offended. “There’s mounted police at every parade.”

“Okay, have you ever touched a horse, let alone ridden one?”  
“Never even considered it.” He shook his head, laughing a little. “But you’ve talked about doing it at your grandparents’ and your uncle’s, and you like doing it so I figured, if I’ve dragged you into watching the Blackhawks, I can at least get on a horse for you.”  
“I can’t wait to see you in the helmet they give beginners.” She tapped his butt lightly, because they were in public and it was broad daylight and clearly a family park. He looked honestly shocked and a little appalled, but kept walking back towards her car at least.

“They’re not actually going to make me wear a helmet to ride a horse, are they?”  
“Beginners wear helmets, in case you fall off. And you have a previous head injury. I’m going to have to make sure they give you one.” She laughed at his face, she couldn’t help it. “Matt you wear a helmet to work every day.”  
“Because there are actual hazards.” He pointed out. She wondered how long she could keep this up before caving and letting him know that the helmets were for liability for the kids, he wouldn’t actually have to wear one. She had at least a good three more minutes of teasing him, she figured. 

Matt hadn’t exactly been bad at horseback riding (it was hard to be bad at trail riding anyway) but seeing her big tough firefighter actually nervous around the horses was pretty amusing. He seemed to get over, well, a little bit, as the day went on and they stayed a lot later than most of the group’s riders because Sylvie was asking about all their horses and the owner was super nice and let her meet all his horses and his miniature horses and plus the dogs, and they talked horses for quite a while. Matt just smiled and let her go, apparently content to be a silent partner in this adventure. They headed back to Starved Rock to get cleaned up and make their reservation. She thought making a reservation at a hotel restaurant was a little strange, until they got there and apparently this was a popular place on a Saturday night. Dinner was pretty good, though Sylvie had to admit her favorite part was the setting – the lodge had been maintained pretty much exactly as it had been built in the 1930s. A pretty perfect night, except that by the time they got back to their room, she was too tired for what she’d wanted earlier: she had to make due with just sleeping next to him tonight, in her spot at his side, pressed against him, and she slept better with his smell and his heat and his Matt-Casey-ness right there. That was okay, they had all weekend to have lots of sex in their cute little cabin room.

The room:

The lodge restaurant:


	16. The Perfect Spot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's nearly come to it. This is the penultimate chapter of this story. I hope to continue with a third tale in this series, but getting started again is hard going. Perhaps it is merely the typical stress of late April and early May setting in. I admit to being quite nervous about how this chapter will be received. It is the chapter thus far that has taken me the very longest to write, at any rate. As always reviews are appreciated and may help grease the wheels for the third story (I make no guarantees, I'm such a moody 'writer': it all depends on my mood which has been rather low the last few days). No sense in the maudlin, this is a chapter I've been looking forward to unveiling mostly because it's illustrated (a bit).

They slept in a bit the next morning and headed over to the lodge for a nice breakfast. It was fantastic, but incredibly filling, so she decided they should go for a hike. Well, a few hikes. Matt was okay with that, but had a particular order he wanted to do the hiking in apparently. Since he said his information came from guys who’d been there before, and he had been in the park for three days already (though most of that was probably at panels and stuff) she couldn’t really argue with his statement that the park was really popular on weekends so he wanted to do the stuff closest to the lodge this morning. Apparently that was the part that was most popular, including the namesake rock. The signposts said that Starved Rock was just three-tenths of a mile from the lodge, but it took a good fifteen minutes to walk it because of the stairs, and the number of people already on the stairs. The views were spectacular, though the legend about the tribe starving to death there was not particularly romantic, she felt happy and silly and giddy and just…in love, out here with Matt. They weren’t really that far outside of Chicago, but it might as well be a different world. It was easy to be tucked into Matt’s side on the overlooks, watching the birds and yes, that was a Bald Eagle. She’d never seen one in person.

“Oh my god, Matt, look at that. It’s magnificent.” She turned to him, realized he was staring at her, not at the eagle, and pressed a finger to his lips. “Don’t even try the corny thing about saying yes it is and meaning me not the eagle.”  
“Can I say how adorable I think you are right now?”  
“Yes.” She nodded perfunctorily. “Because I _am_ adorable. I’m not magnificent like that eagle.”

“I think you’re pretty magnificent, but definitely not in the same way as that eagle.”

“We can’t stay up here all day.” She pointed out. The lookout points were getting crowded as the morning wore on, and they’d been up here for a while, taking in nature from a height not often available in the Midwest.

“Excuse me, mister?” Matt turned at the kid’s voice. The little boy looked about seven years old, and Sylvie glanced around, quickly finding the parents nearby keeping a close eye on their interaction. They had two younger boys with them, one in a carrier strapped to the dad’s chest and one, about three years old, holding his mom’s hand. What Sylvie guessed were grandparents were standing nearby as well. Matt squatted down, putting himself actually just below the boy’s own height.

“Hey, buddy, what’s up?”  
“Are you really a firefighter? Your shirt has a logo like the fire department and the other word starts with a C, but I don’t know that word yet.”

“Yep, the back of my shirt does say Chicago Fire Department. Chicago is a funny word so don’t worry about knowing it yet. Where’re you from?”  
“My name is Grayson and I’m from Fort Worth. That’s in Texas.”  
“You came an awful long way, Grayson.”  
“My granny and gramps live nearby. My mommy grew up here. We’re visiting for Mother’s Day. You’re a real firefighter?”  
“Yes, I am. My name’s Matt.”

“Daddy said I could come over and I want to say ‘thank you’. Because you help people. Our house had a fire in Feb-wary. A firefighter carried my baby brother out. I know it wasn’t you. But I bet you saved someone else’s baby brother sometime so ‘thank you’.” Grayson shrugged, but he launched himself into a hug at Matt, who caught him. A moment later, Matt picked the boy up, and carried him over to his waiting parents. Sylvie did not miss the moisture in Matt’s eyes, and knew she had some in her own. Matt set Grayson back down, squatting again to easily meet the boy’s eyes.

“Thank _you_ , Grayson. It’s hard to beat a big hug for making a guy feel good, huh?” Grayson nodded emphatically. Matt continued, “I bet you’re a pretty great big brother, too.”  
“Uh-huh. This is my brother Lincoln, he’s three, and that’s Easton, he’s the baby.”  
“Hi, Lincoln.” Matt smiled at the younger, shyer, boy. “I’m Matt.”

“Hi.” The boy almost whispered. Matt stood up, held out a hand to the dad.

“Matt Casey.”  
“Cody Miller, my wife Jenna, and her parents, Dave and Linda Higgins.”

“Like I said, Matt Casey, and this is my girlfriend, Sylvie Brett.” Handshakes all around, then Matt spoke again, “Grayson tells me you guys had a fire a couple months back.”  
“Everyone got out safely, that’s the most important thing.” Jenna said, her smile a little shaky. It had definitely been a bad one then, Sylvie figured. “Thank you, for doing what you do.”  
“I’m always happy to answer the bell.” Matt assured her sincerely. “You’ve got great boys. I don’t want to keep you on such an important day, though. But,” Matt squatted back down, pulling his wallet out and handing a card to Grayson, “Grayson, if it’s cool with your parents, if you send me your address at that email – see it, right there – I’ve got some official Chicago Fire Department gear that has your name on it.”  
“What’s captain mean?” Grayson asked. Sylvie caught the look on the adults’ faces, they must have a pretty decent idea of hierarchy, or at least enough to know that Matt wasn’t just a regular firefighter. Sylvie decided to answer for him, because Matt would totally downplay it, and seven year-old boys wanted the cool story.

“It means Matt’s in charge of a whole shift of firefighters, that means he’s in charge of a truck, an engine, and a really special sort of team called the Rescue Squad.”  
“You’re a _boss_ firefighter?” Grayson asked, eyes wide and clearly impressed. Matt chuckled a little, but nodded. “That’s so cool! Mommy, can we get the stuff, can we?”  
“The truck t-shirt is going to be a dress on him.” Matt warned Jenna. “We have kid-sized department stuff, but my company’s shirts don’t come smaller than an adult small.”

“He’ll grow into it.” Jenna grinned broadly as her son bounced in place. “Thank you, so much. He’s been obsessed with firefighters since our fire.”  
“It’s a slog through the paperwork, but eventually, it’ll come out alright. I just finished up my own mess with that, trust me, I understand. Grayson, you keep taking care of your little brothers, okay? And make sure you keep that card,” Matt stood up, clearly now talking to the parents, “I’m sorry, you can’t get my contact information from the CFD right now.”

“We’ll make sure he hangs onto it.” Cody shook Matt’s hand again. “Nice to meet you, Captain Casey.”  
“You, too.”

They hiked west of the Lodge that morning, it took them a half hour to make it out to St. Louis Canyon, plus of course Sylvie had to take photos and post them, sending a couple back to Stella and Emily, because those two were still like gossip queens about her relationship with Matt and every single milestone. It was kind of sweet, but also maybe a bit strange. It was just them, though, and she chose to take it as a sign of deep affection for both herself and Matt (she knew Stella truly liked Matt a lot, but Sylvie wasn’t sure it was possible to be in Kelly’s life very long and not like Matt Casey – maybe if you never ever let Kelly know you didn’t like Matt). It clouded up a little on their hike back, and they decided to have a light lunch in the café rather than head into town or anything like that. It rained a bit, but it was perfectly timed so that the sun was back out before they finished a leisurely lunch. Matt suggested a short stop by their cabin, and she took him up on the implied offer of a short nap in his arms. They kissed a bunch, but it didn’t need to go any farther than that for her to feel how much he loved her. It was kind of more romantic to keep it to just kissing. Okay, her hands wandered a little. She challenged any straight woman out there to try keep her hands off Matt Casey. Actually, no, Sylvie thought, as she pulled his arms a little tighter around her, she _warned_ any straight woman out there to keep her hands off. This was her spot, she was never giving it up.

Matt gently shook her from her doze about one o’clock. He had more hiking he wanted to do, apparently, which yeah, they could lay in bed together when they weren’t on a weekend away. Plus, it was actually kind of hard to sleep because the cabins were in a kind of busy part of the park this close to the lodge and she was pretty certain there was a Sunday afternoon wedding she’d heard starting to arrive.

“Where are we hiking to this afternoon?” She asked, since he seemed to have pretty firm ideas about which of the trails to do when – he even had a backpack he’d brought with bottles of water and snack bars, and spare socks and shoes. Knowing Matt, he’d done research before she arrived, though of course he couldn’t have predicted that super sweet moment with Grayson and his family. She kissed him good and proper, ignoring the fact that they were currently on the little front porch outside their room.

“What was that for?” Matt asked, not that he was complaining, she could tell.

“That was for being the sort of guy who saves babies, even if you didn’t save Grayson’s baby brother, I know for a fact you’ve saved a few babies in your career. It’s brave, and heroic, and really sexy.” She leaned in a little closer for that last part. There really were wedding guests arriving, walking past their door. She looked around the building, seeing the chairs set up and the guests starting to arrive, she couldn’t help grabbing Matt’s hand as they walked towards the hiking trails.

“This would be a pretty place for a wedding.” She decided aloud.

“You think?” He sounded…nervous. Why did he sound nervous? Did he think she was pushing for something or hinting or something? She tried to carefully back-pedal, carefully but honestly.

“Sure, on a day like this, it’s gorgeous here. And that little area is set back enough it doesn’t feel like everyone in the park is in your wedding with you. But what if it rains? Plus, I’ve always wanted a church wedding.” Oh, that might be taken wrong, too. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with non-church weddings, your mom’s was pretty, and so was Mouch’s, and-“

“Always thought I’d get married in a church, too.” Matt smiled softly at her. He then changed the subject, going back to her earlier question. “I wanted to head farther out this afternoon, maybe get a little bit away from some of the crowds by hiking farther from the lodge. I was thinking the trail east goes out almost five miles, we’d go out to that one. It’ll take us a while.”  
“That’s the real reason you wanted to stop by the room, so we could get the bag with the bottles of water and protein bars.” Sylvie raised her eyebrows at him. “And here I thought you just wanted to spend time cuddling with me.”  
“I can’t have two motivations?” Matt laughed lightly, and kissed her softly.

“I think a long hike sounds great.” Sylvie agreed easily with his proposed plan.

As they moved away from the lodge, the number of people on the trails did thin out. By the time they passed the sign for a turn-off towards LaSalle canyon, it was getting to almost feel like they were actually in wilderness. It was beautiful, and quiet, and she could stop and look at wildlife and take pictures, and Matt just smiled that pleased smile of his that said he didn’t understand why she wanted a picture of that butterfly but he thought she was the cutest thing he’d ever seen (she’d take that, at least until tonight, then she was going for ‘sexiest thing he’d ever seen’ because he totally did not know about the incredibly risqué lingerie she had brought along). Given their pace, it took them almost two hours to walk the nearly five miles out to Illinois Canyon. It was beautiful, but not as quiet as she might’ve expected, though it wasn’t crowded either. They hadn’t passed many people the last mile or so, she was just a little confused.

“There’s another parking lot the locals told me, near this end of the park. I guess the locals park there, bring their dogs in here, head back to the lot for a short hike or whatever.” Matt explained softly. They were seated on a downed tree, which given its size she was pretty sure an entire football team could sit on without damaging it, and she wondered what had felled it. It must be weather, of course, in a park, but what sort of flood or erosion had killed it, or maybe just old age. Matt opened the bag, handing her a bottle of water and a protein bar. He took the same for himself, and kissed her temple fondly.

“This is beautiful, Matt. It’s like the perfect recharge. I love the city. I love our jobs and our house and our lives in Chicago, but this is just…perfect. Did you know about it before the conference?”  
“I’d heard about the park.” Matt nodded. “I’d never been here before, but I’d heard good things. That’s why I wanted you to come out, too.”

They stayed just a few more minutes in Illinois Canyon, happy to enjoy the break and sort of people watch while also taking in the scenery. They had a few canyons they’d passed on the way out that Matt wanted to see on the way back, so he checked everything was closed on the bag and then they headed out. They kept an easy pace, they had the rest of the afternoon to make it back to the lodge after all, and their next stop was Kaskaskia Canyon. There were a couple people there, but not many, and Sylvie looked around, thinking how amazing this would look in the fall when the leaves changed colors and made a decision.

“I want to come back in October. When the leaves are changing. Don’t you think this will be the most beautiful place in the state in the fall?”  
“Can I say the corny thing now?” Matt asked, pulling her into his arms. She nodded, and rolled her eyes. “Anyplace with you in it is the most beautiful place, so if you’re here, it definitely will be.”  
“Okay, that was corny, but sweet.” She admitted, kissing him softly.

“It’s been a rough six months or so, you know? And you’ve stuck it out with me, even when it had to be really difficult. Even though your parents don’t like me, your mother won’t even look at me, and my ex-wife sometimes causes scenes, and I can be a moody, difficult, closed-mouth bastard sometimes.” Matt looked her straight in the eyes. “I’ve been in love before, you know that, but I’ve never been in love like this before. You called me your foundation, baby, but it’s been a long time since I felt like I had, like I could really, like I had a lighthouse, God I suck at words.” Matt paused, shaking his head. “I mean, for a long time I’ve felt like I had to take care of myself, no matter what, that no matter how lost or scared or completely in the dark I felt, there wasn’t anyone to…show me the way out, to better things. You do that. Every day, without trying, you make me feel like there’s always a rainbow just beyond the horizon and you’re taking me there. Like I always imagined a sailor on nasty seas at night would feel to see a lighthouse at their home port.”  
“I love you, Matt Casey.” Sylvie kissed his face off. Maybe it wasn’t the smoothest delivery ever, but that just made it all the more romantic because she knew how much he struggled to talk about his feelings, to find the right words to express the feelings that ran so deep and true and strong in him. She didn’t think she’d ever heard anything so fantastically perfect as him calling her his lighthouse. She knew he felt adrift sometimes, tossed about on a lot of storms beyond his control, and she wanted to be not just the light guiding him home, but the home as well. A discrete cough broke them up, and she almost laughed, God you could tell they weren’t in Chicago anymore, or that little reminder they were technically in a public place would’ve been ruder. The older woman who’d cleared her throat just smiled at them.

“Personally, I don’t mind, but my grandsons think it’s gross to kiss girls.” She nodded at the boys a little farther into the canyon, who were in fact sort of staring at them. She laughed, “I think their opinion of tough firefighters just took a blow, because clearly, you like spending time with girls.”

“Sorry about that.” Sylvie apologized for their display of affection. They had totally been completely making out, okay, well at least doing a lot of deep French-kissing, with an audience. She knew she was blushing.

“Oh, sweetie, I don’t blame you.” The woman started to walk away, back towards her grandsons, a bit of a smirk on her face. “If I was about thirty years younger, I’d be kissing him like that too – public or not. He’s a hottie.”

Sylvie laughed, and now it was definitely Matt who was blushing. Still, he took her hand and started leading them back north towards the main trail, where they’d turn west towards the lodge. She knew he had one more canyon he wanted to see out here, but she had let him have the map, following his directions (which this far out, there was really only one trail, hard to get lost anyway) and content to just go where Matt wanted this afternoon. They turned back south at the Y, following a sign towards Ottawa Canyon. It wasn’t a long walk, but with the earlier rain it was a little muddy and sloshy. She ended up using Matt for stability a few times. He somehow never seemed to slip at all, as sure-footed as he always was on a scene. The path opened up a little into what had to be the canyon. There was an overhang, curved into almost a half-circle, and a waterfall flowing down into a small little basin. They had this entirely to themselves right now, and she could hear the birds and the breeze in the trees, and the sound of the waterfall. This was beautiful and perfect, maybe her favorite place they’d found so far. She was caught up in looking at everything, just following where he lightly pulled her, until she realized her feet were getting wet as they stepped through the small creek. He was skirting the basin, taking them behind the waterfall, coming to a stop right behind it. No, this was the perfect spot, she thought. Right here.

She turned to tell him as much, feeling his hand leave hers, but her heart stopped, might have literally stopped and skipped about a half-dozen beats because Matt was actually on one knee, in the mud, and he had a ring, and she was pretty certain he had just actually said the words “Sylvie, will you marry me?” but it took a moment for her to register, yes, he had said that, and yes, he had a ring, and oh, fuck **_yes_ ,** she was marrying this man. Reaching out to grab the ring box (no way was she letting that hit any dirt ever), she dropped to her knees to match him and kissed him as hard and as long as she could. Somehow, they ended up with Matt on his butt and her on his lap, and the ring box still in both their hands protectively. She kissed him until she couldn’t breathe anymore like this and she had to pull back. He wasn’t panting as hard as she was, but then, maybe his heart rate wasn’t what hers was either.

“I hope that was a yes.” Matt managed to find words before she did. He stood up, and pulled her up as well.

“That was the most enthusiastic yes _ever_.” She kissed him again. She broke away, finally looking down at the ring beyond her earlier glance to be certain that yes, he did in fact have a ring. Tears came to her eyes, it was beautiful and it looked custom, or at least, she’d never seen anything like it. He took it out of the box carefully, and slid it on her finger. Of course it fit perfectly.

“I borrowed a ring from your jewelry box, had the jeweler size it.” Matt answered her unspoken question.

“You designed it?”

“Sort of. I kind of knew what I wanted, the jeweler designed it based on what I described. Each stone represents something I’m promising you with this ring.” She was crying, not sobbing yet, but totally crying. “The diamond in the middle, that’s obvious, it’s for eternity. The sapphire here, that’s for fidelity, and the emerald, there, it’s the symbol for love.” She had no words for him, nothing, and all she could do, while sobbing this much, was hug him as hard as she could. She felt her feet leave the ground as he returned the gesture, and if it was a little tight (he was _strong_ ) it was really a perfect warm feeling. Once they’d both gathered their emotions, they made their way back to the lodge – but only after she’d snapped a picture of the view from the very spot where he’d proposed and then one of the two of them (her ring visible of course) with the waterfall behind them. She texted it to Emily and Stella, telling them if they posted about it anywhere before she could call her mother tomorrow, she’d kill them, then added Kelly at a second thought.

*Oh, girl, he didn’t?! That’s amazing! I love it!* Emily texted back first, unsurprisingly.

*Captain did well! I’m so happy for you two! I knew you’d be great together!* Stella texted, and may have abused quite a few emojis after the message. It took a moment, but Kelly’s response came in a couple minutes down the trail back towards their room. 

*Called it.*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I didn't want to give it ALL away in the opening notes. I hope this lived up to any expectations that had been set for this moment in this little series of mine. If you've already given kudos, I know you can't again, but comments are appreciated even if it's just to tell me that you liked the pictures!
> 
> The images are all the real places: St. Louis Canyon, Illinois Canyon, and Ottawa Canyon. I'm disappointed that my own photography of them is not digital as it is from some years ago when I was still living in the Chicago suburbs and was going through a film-only phase (I thought I was an artist, okay? I was young and stupid) but I have such clear, wonderful, fond memories of Starved Rock State Park and it truly is a relatively short trip out of Chicago that I just had to include it.


	17. Big News to Share

They didn’t make it to the wineries she’d wanted to visit on Monday. It was entirely her fault. Besides, she figured that gave them the perfect excuse to come back here in the near future. It was close enough, they could come out without even needing to take furlough really. Okay, the truth was that they hadn’t made it because she had decided that hiking was her favorite activity ever, no that wasn’t true either – hiking was her favorite, right behind the other thing they did most of Sunday night and a few times through Monday, which was sex with her _fiancé_. She’d had a fiancé before, but this one she was absolutely completely certain about, and it was so much more exciting. The call home had been a little rough – Dad seemed enthusiastic enough, but Mom still had ‘reservations’ about Matt, and Sylvie totally should not have called while Matt was in the room, because he’d read her expressions perfectly (well, and her half of the conversation) and even if he’d already known Mom’s opinion of him had taken a substantial nosedive with those damn pictures, she knew he was disappointed about it. Probably hurt, too. She’d tried to explain, and Matt accepted it, said as long as Sylvie was certain about him they had plenty of time to win her mom over, but she knew Matt (stupidly long-suffering as he was) just figured he deserved it or something. Sylvie also knew Mom would get over it by the wedding, she’d get to know Matt better and Hope’s lies would be proven lies just by Matt’s character, so it was fine. Mostly. Except Matt’s hurt feelings would probably linger a long time. She just didn’t know what to do about that. She didn't want to think about it now, she just wanted to be happy right now. 

She swore everyone who knew to secrecy, they wanted to announce it officially at Molly’s when they got back to the city Tuesday. Kelly she trusted to actually not tell anyone, and he’d probably keep an eye on Stella, so they should be safe if Foster just didn’t talk at all on shift. Matt had let her know that he sent Gabby an email about it, and she didn’t feel the need to follow it with one of her own. He'd texted his mother and sister. So Monday was spent with morning sex, then brunch, then nap-sex, then a short hike again, lunch on the back deck of the lodge (the park was a lot quieter on Mondays than on the weekend), then post-lunch sex, a hike out to some of the canyons they hadn’t seen yesterday on the way back because she’d been in a hurry to get him back to the room for celebratory sex, then dinner, post-dinner sex, back to the lodge for drinks on the back patio, and then the room for more sex. She was exhausted and getting pretty sore, but incredibly happily exhausted.

“Do you know,” Sylvie started, her fingers tracing idly through the hair on Matt’s chest, “that I have lost count of how many orgasms I’ve had today?”  
“Really?”  
“Mm-hmm. I had a count, for scientific purposes of course, but you just melted my brain.”  
“I’m not even sorry.”  
“I’m not sorry, but I am sore. I need to get up, hope a hot shower helps.”  
“Sore muscles? I can-“  
“Nope, no back rubs or leg rubs or any rubs!” She held up her hands in surrender as she sat up, serious about getting that shower. They were both kind of a sweaty sticky mess actually. “You and your hands and… _other_ parts of you, have done enough – I swear I must be dripping with your cum, I feel so wide open and wet.”  
“Fuck, Sylvie.” Matt groaned, grabbed her around the waist and in a second she was pinned back underneath him somehow. “You say stuff like that, and…fuck.”  
“You can’t be serious.” She was honestly surprised that he could even be thinking seriously about sex. Wasn’t half a dozen rounds in a day enough? But no, she could feel him actually getting hard against her thigh. Wasn't he supposed to be middle-aged and less horny or at least less able to get it up for marathon sex? He kissed her neck, and it felt nice, but yeah, no. She put both hands on his chest and pushed up. She had no hope of actually moving his mass (he was heavier than he looked, he was all muscle), but of course Matt stopped at even the slightest hint of a ‘no’ let alone one that blatant.

“What?”  
“Matt, I love you, so so _so_ much, and you are an incredibly sexy man, who I am usually ready to jump at any notice or opportunity, but I’m serious. I am really sore. I just want a shower, and maybe to read my book for a little while, and to _sleep_ in your arms.” He smiled at her, so warmly, and there was so much love in his eyes, he had the most beautiful eyes, especially when the smile reached them.

“Alright, you shower – alone – and I’ll pack us up. Then I’ll shower, and then we can just cuddle in bed, maybe get a few kisses good night at least?”  
“Just kissing.” She agreed, totally caving on that because she loved kissing him and she also knew from experience that Matt would truly be content to just make out like they were teenagers again. He really seemed to love just kissing her, even for substantial amounts of time. She had a sneaking suspicion that he had never in his life been held enough so he reveled in any sort of physical affection. What he proposed though sounded like the perfect night right now. Tomorrow, they'd drive back to Chicago and tomorrow night, they'd make their official announcement at Molly's.

She knew that she had about thirty seconds once they stepped inside Molly’s before the announcement was out, whether she made it or someone else noticed the ring or Foster (possibly Stella) opened her big mouth. Kelly knew how to keep quiet. Matt had already heard back from his sister, niece, and mother, and she’d texted Leo, so they were in the clear on letting the family know first, now it was time to tell their other family. Nancy hadn’t been happy, apparently, but Christie had called to congratulate them, and Violet sounded quite excited, at least. This part of their family, the firehouse family, they were going to be excited, definitely. Just before they went in the door, Sylvie decided she wanted to _not_ make the announcement.

“Follow my lead.”  
“Always.” Matt agreed, and she kissed him swiftly. He opened the door for her, and she grabbed his right hand with her left as he followed her inside.  
“Hey, how was the trip you two?” Herrmann asked loudly. It was a Tuesday night, so the place wasn’t packed, though as a firefighter/cop/doctor bar, work schedules weren’t exactly the typical Monday to Friday so it was far from dead.

“It was amazing.” Sylvie gushed honestly. “You wouldn’t even know you were still in Illinois, it is so gorgeous and the bluffs and the canyons…the canyons are definitely my favorite part.”  
“Cindy and me took the kids out to Starved Rock couple years ago. Kids musta jumped in at least half a dozen waterfalls.”  
“One waterfall is definitely my favorite now. Can I get a scotch for Matt and a whiskey sour for me? And Herrmann, if you let Matt pay tonight instead of me, you will be in big trouble,” She turned and looked straight at Matt, “and so will you, mister.”  
“Herrmann, you heard her – I guess I’m on her tab tonight.” Matt held up his hands in surrender, to laughter pretty much all around.

“Nope.” Herrmann shook his head. “At least, not ‘til second round. Severide said he had your first round tonight.”  
“I figured, you know.” Kelly shrugged, and Sylvie rolled her eyes. Only with Kelly and Matt did that constitute actual conversation. She knew that was Kelly-Matt-speak for ‘congratulations, brother, I love you, I’m happy for you, and I think it’s great’. Both of them talked in half sentences and coded manly whatevers, especially to each other, it was endearing mostly. The longer she was pretty much in the middle of their friendship she came to agree more and more with Stella: you could never _understand_ Matt-and-Kelly. You had to just _accept_ the oddities of the Kelly-and-Matt entity. 

“Well, start a tab anyway.” Sylvie handed over her credit card, figuring that way it might actually end up on her card, not on Matt’s mysteriously-appearing-later tab. She also happened to use her left hand to do it, and let Herrmann’s natural tendency to open his big mouth do the rest of the work for her as he took the card.

“Captain!” Herrmann looked shocked, then a broad grin spread across his face. “This is great news!”  
“What is?” Mouch asked, and Herrmann just nodded in Sylvie’s direction.

“Brett and the captain!”  
“They’ve been-“ Mouch saw the ring then, too, clearly. Matt hadn’t exactly gone small on the ring, not that it was too ostentatious, Sylvie thought it was perfect. “You’re getting married!”

“Wait, what?” Cruz asked, looking shocked, but he had just gotten to the question before everyone else because there was a chorus of similar statements, quickly followed by a loud and long series of shared congratulations. She must’ve hugged everyone at 51 twice, and a couple of them three times. She lost track of Matt for a few minutes, in part because despite having already seen pictures of it, Emily and Stella had to gush over the ring, then so did Chloe, and Lily, and why there were three stones, the whole story, which took a little while to go through.

“So, asked her under a waterfall, huh, Captain?” Stella asked, just as Sylvie felt Matt’s arms wrap around her from behind. “You can’t share any of that romantic streak of yours with Kelly?”  
“You really want him to change?” Matt asked, a tiny hint of a challenge in his voice. Yeah, Matt reacted to anything he saw as a slight on Kelly the same way you’d expect a fierce little brother to react (even if the ‘little brother’ age difference was less than a year).

“Nah. Can’t figure why, but I love him like he is. Just…give him tips, if the time ever comes, huh?”  
“I’ll try.” Matt laughed.

“Herrmann!” Chief called. “Severide had their first round, I’ve got the next for these two. Congratulations, Brett, Casey.” Sylvie happily accepted the hug, and was surprised a little when Chief even hugged Matt. Hugging Matt was rarely done by the guys, it was usually a handshake. It turned out in just a few minutes that Sylvie wasn’t going to need to buy any rounds tonight – they had a wealth of friends apparently willing to get them both really drunk to celebrate their engagement. Good thing they’d gone ahead and parked Matt’s truck in the garage at the new house, it was definitely going to be an Uber night. She was nearly three full drinks into her night when Chief came to hug her again, apparently on his way home for the night.

“I’m very happy for you, Sylvie. Take good care of him.” Chief leaned in a little closer, as if imparting a secret of some sort. “He’s a better man than he knows, and he deserves every bit of happiness, you both do.”

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

She was _late_. She was officially more than one month _late_. Somehow, she hadn’t noticed until she missed her second period. She looked down at the ring on her finger. Matt had asked her just a few weeks ago, and she’d said yes, and their wedding was scheduled for September: neither of them had wanted a long engagement, but there were actual procedures it turned out for Matt to marry with the blessings of the Catholic Church. They had decided on Holy Family church, just down the street from the firehouse, and if Mom wasn’t best pleased with her choice of husband, the choice to not get married back in Fowlerton had been received surprisingly well – the Catholic bit not as much. Mom would get over it. The church was beautiful, and Matt’s new parish (near the new house) apparently had rules for performing weddings that Matt didn’t meet (mostly he hadn’t actually been an ‘active parishioner’ long enough and they didn’t want to wait). As a firefighter, Holy Family welcomed them immediately. So they had plans. Her being _late_ wasn’t part of the plans. It also wasn’t the end of the world, she reminded herself. She hadn’t planned, they hadn’t planned, on this but she knew they both wanted kids, and did not want to wait a bunch of years (Matt wasn’t getting any farther from 40 and she was already 30). She knew Matt was going to be excited. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to tell him right away. She was scared for him. He’d had his dreams of a family pulled away from him so many times. She hadn’t known him all that well yet when Gabby had the ectopic pregnancy, but she remembered how he’d reacted. She also remembered that everyone had been really solicitous of Gabby, but Matt had been a little forgotten – Gabby had lost a baby, Gabby needed extra sensitivity, Gabby was going through a lot…and Matt just sort of quietly waded through the shit while trying to support her. Which was sweet, and perfectly Matt, but it was not all that good for Matt. Then Gabby had fostered Louie, and Matt ended up the sweetest sort of dad, but then they’d lost Louie. And then they’d been trying again just before Gabby left for Puerto Rico. And Gabby had mentioned years ago that his engagement with Hallie had broken up over her not wanting kids and him really wanting them. Sylvie couldn’t bear the thought of putting him through a loss again. She didn’t want to tell him until she was absolutely certain and maybe, even, wait until she was past the high-risk period. But, on the other hand, she didn’t want him to feel excluded or lied to if she found out on her own and didn’t tell him for weeks. Gabby had left him so sensitive to being not told things, to being cut out, that even explaining to him that she hadn’t wanted to hurt him would probably just hurt him more. So that was out. She had to tell him. First, she had to wait for this stupid stick she’d had to pee on (gross). Then, she decided, she’d double-check at a doctor’s office. Then, and only then, would she tell Matt. When she had something definitive to tell him. She looked at the stick once the timer on her phone went off. Well. Time to call the doctor’s office. That was definitely a plus sign.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this was meant to be the end of Queen of All My Dreams. There's one more chapter yet to go, because I changed my mind about pacing (not about the direction of the story - the plot was always going this same direction).
> 
> P.S. Don't get your hopes up...and try not to hate me.


	18. Planning for the Future

She didn’t technically lie to Matt. She had an appointment at her doctor’s office. That was exactly where she went. He hadn’t even asked if he should or could go along to her gynecologist at the women’s health clinic attached to Med. Then again, he wasn’t really protective like that, he wasn’t going to insist on going with her to appointments. If she asked him, he’d go, of course he would, but just for a regular check-up he’d follow her lead. She was actually the more overbearing one about these things: she had insisted on going to his neurologist’s appointment last week either – in fact, that conversation about the fact that he _had_ twice-yearly neurologist ‘check ups’ had led to their second fight (small one, granted) and the appointment itself to their third fight. She was still mad at him that he’d just happened to never mention, in five years of knowing her and six months of being together as a couple, that he had been told he should retire because his skull was permanently compromised and another head injury could kill him more easily than another firefighter. It wasn’t even like head injuries were totally uncommon. He did overhaul, truckies did the overhaul, and she knew they sometimes had shit fall on their heads. Helmets, sure, they wore them, but – okay, so she’d over-reacted a little. She was supposed to be moody and hormonal, right? It just scared her, how readily he shrugged off these unknown possibilities that a good concussion for someone else might have catastrophic results for him. She wondered if Kelly knew, if Chief knew, if anyone knew but Matt and her. Her gynecologist had recommended an obstetrician for her, one of her partners, and Sylvie was just hanging out in the waiting room now. Time to sit and stew and worry about head injuries Matt hadn't even suffered yet. Is this what parenting is like? Not that she wanted to parent Matt. Thankfully, further angst along that line was interrupted by her being called by one of the office nurses.

Once she was back in the room, and her urine had been taken and her blood for the tests to confirm her pregnancy, she again had nothing to do but sit and wait. She played on her phone, kind of wishing she’d told someone just so she had someone to talk to about all her nerves. It was unplanned and she was really nervous, not scared, just anxious. She knew she’d be okay, and she knew she and Matt would be okay, Matt would be there for her and everything like that. She just hadn’t planned any of this. God knew she and Matt hadn’t done things in the usual way or order so far, but she’d not really wanted to be the pregnant bride. She definitely didn’t want anyone thinking they got married because she got knocked up. That bothered her more than anything else. They were getting married because they loved each other. They didn’t want to wait just because there was no point in waiting. It wasn’t because of a pregnancy. Just imagining the rumors in Fowlerton made her cringe. Why did you have to wait so long for this stuff? It gave you too much time to worry about things.

“Hi, Sylvie, I’m Dr. Nguyen. Dr. Lewis tells me that you’re a paramedic with the city, and that you are newly engaged, so congratulations on that.”  
“Thank you.”  
“Your fiancé isn’t here today?”  
“No, he’s working.” Sylvie explained. She left out that he would totally be here, if the word ‘pregnant’ had come up in conversation at all. Instead, she'd sent him off to work on their new house with a kiss this morning. 

“So, you told my nurse that you had a positive home pregnancy test last week and your last period was six weeks ago.”  
“Yep.”  
“Your history also says you’re on an oral birth control.”

“Yes. I missed just a couple days, not even missed, just messed up the time because of a bad call at work, but it was two days in a row of missing the right time by hours, not minutes. I think maybe…that’s what did it.” Sylvie answered and explained. That was the only thing she could really think of for why she’d gotten pregnant. Well, of course, “I mean besides the obvious that we weren’t using condoms to double-up, Matt I mean. My fiancé, Matt.”  
“So definitely not a planned pregnancy. Is it common for you to miss a period? You must’ve missed two by now.”  
“With a lot of stress, I miss sometimes. I always have. There was a lot of stuff going on this winter and spring, so I just figured you know, normal stress reaction. I should’ve figured it out quicker, but I didn’t have any other symptoms.”  
“I hope Dr. Lewis told you that I’m pretty forthright with my patients. I don’t believe in anything but the direct method of communication.”  
“It’s why she recommended you to me. I mean, I don’t like rude people, who does, but she said you’re going to give it to me straight. Matt will love that. So will I, but Matt likes honest and to-the-point.”  
“I want to do a transvaginal ultrasound to confirm what your blood test is telling me, okay? Then we’ll talk some more.”  
Sylvie nodded, and boy, wasn’t a transvaginal ultrasound fun, but she couldn’t see anything at all on the screen, what she could see of the screen. She didn’t know exactly what she might be looking for, but she didn’t see anything really. She knew it was too early for there to be anything that looked at all like a baby or fetus to be visible. Dr. Nguyen finished up, made a couple quick notes, and once Sylvie was sitting back up, she moved to be directly in front of Sylvie.

“Sylvie, you’re not pregnant.”  
“How did I get the positive result?” She asked after a shaky moment.  
“What your blood test indicated, and the ultrasound today confirms for me, is that you were pregnant. You had what we call a chemical pregnancy, but for whatever reason, it wasn’t viable. You’ll probably have a very heavy period, starting about tomorrow if I had to guess.” Dr. Nguyen looked apologetic. “Your hormone levels were still high enough to get a result on a home pregnancy tests, but the blood test puts them too low for six weeks after your last period, substantially lower than we’d expect. You also do not have a gestational sac visible. Now, I can tell from your records with Dr. Lewis that there shouldn’t be any inherent problem in conception for you, it was just that this one didn’t work out. It happens to a lot of women in these really early weeks. Nothing you did caused it and nothing you didn’t do could’ve prevented it.”

“So…no baby?”  
“No baby. Not this time. Now, Dr. Lewis told me that you are going to be married soon to a very handsome firefighter, so I expect to see you back here with much happier results in the future, though.” Dr. Nguyen nodded towards Sylvie’s left hand. “He definitely has good taste in rings, or did you pick that out?”  
“All him. Well, I’d mentioned I liked platinum better than gold, but really it was all him. So, you think I can get pregnant again, without any problems? We definitely want a family.”  
“I can’t make any guarantees, but I don’t foresee any problems for you based on Dr. Lewis’ records. Of course, you'll want to go off the birth control to make that more likely because regular ovulation does help – along with having a hottie for a husband. That just makes the getting pregnant part more fun, I think.”  
“We have plenty of fun.” Sylvie sighed, though, trying to sort out her feelings. She was sad, and disappointed, but relieved and…just too many feelings right now.

“Okay, take a minute, I know this isn’t the news you wanted. But, when you and Matt are ready for this again, I look forward to meeting him, okay?”

  
She decided there was no better time to tell him than that night. She’d simply told him she didn’t feel up to going to Molly’s with Kelly and Stella (who was working tonight) and of course Matt had agreed to stay in, just watch some TV and enjoy the time with the apartment to themselves. Work on the house was coming along, and after they’d had dinner he’d shown her pictures of the reclaimed wood floor he’d laid in the front hall and living room, as well as the refinished wood of the stairs to the second floor. She loved it, of course she did, but she didn’t think her crying a little was really the reaction he’d expected or been looking for.

“Sylvie, what’s wrong?” He asked, setting his phone aside to gently wipe at her cheeks with his thumbs as he turned to face her.

“I went to the doctor today.” She managed, then had to steady her voice. Matt paled, and she could see panic hit him, it was all in the eyes like he’d just spotted a tornado coming right at him on an old country road. She hurried out, “I’m fine, there’s nothing wrong with me. I just thought….”  
“Okay.” Matt was breathing again at least. He took a deep breath. “You just thought what? Which doctor was it today, the, uh…the woman’s doctor?”  
“Oh my god, Matt.” She had to laugh at that. He was such a dork sometimes. “You can say the word gynecologist. Repeat after me: gynecologist.”  
“I’m not sure I can.” Matt chuckled, shaking his head. “There’s like five words I cannot say without cringing. I may have to add that to the list.”  
“You cannot call her my ‘woman’s doctor’ for the rest of our lives.” Sylvie chuckled again, she couldn’t help it. His nose wrinkled and he looked about twelve with that look on his face. “When you have an urologist, I’m not going to call him – or her – your ‘man’s doctor’ am I?”  
“What the hell would I need a urologist for?”

“Several issues actually, but some day, when little Matt stays flaccid when – what? What’s that face?”  
“That’s one of my five words.” Matt pulled a face, like someone had puked on him.

“What is? Flaccid?” Yeah, that was definitely it. She bit her lip, hard, to stop from laughing at him.

“No guy wants to hear that word, especially not in combination with – and we’ve talked about you calling him little. He’s gonna take offense and not want to play with you anymore.”  
“Yeah, I’m sure.” She scooted closer to Matt, kissing him softly. She slowly increased the pressure, then felt his mouth open and she slipped her tongue in to tangle with his. Her hands started at his knees, gradually moving up both his thighs, then down, then back up a little farther. On the fourth such journey, her left hand kept going, finding a ‘little Matt’ who was clearly not unwilling to play with her. She pulled back, smiling broadly at him. “I don’t think he minds all that much – seems like as long as I’m paying attention, he takes it as good attention.”  
“That’s dirty pool.” Matt replied, but he was smiling.

“To get us back on topic, yes, my appointment was with a ‘woman’s doctor’ but not my gynecologist. That’s Dr. Lewis. I was with one of her partners today, Dr. Nguyen. Dr. Nguyen is an obstetrician.”  
“Ob-“ Matt stopped, eyes going wide.

“I’m not.” She cut him off, before his hopes could go any higher than they already had in that split second. “I was, but now I’m not.”  
“You…were?”  
“I missed my period last month. I do that sometimes with stress, and we had a rough winter and spring, so I didn’t think anything of it, not really, until I was late this month too. I took a home pregnancy test and it was positive.”  
“When did that happen?”  
“Late last week.”  
“You didn’t tell me.” It was half statement and half question.  
“After everything, Matt, with Gabby losing the baby and then Louie, and then why she left, I just, I just couldn’t tell you until I was sure and had it confirmed.”  
“You…but you would have found out, for sure, without me.” Matt looked upset, which is what she’d been trying to avoid but it was probably impossible to avoid. “And you got bad news without me. I could’ve come.”  
“I thought it’d just be a blood test to confirm, then we’d go in in a few weeks for the first big one together, hear the heart beat and everything. Once I knew it wasn’t a false positive.”  
“But it was a false positive?”

“No. It was a chemical pregnancy.”  
“Is that like not a real pregnancy?” Matt looked very confused which at least was outweighing the hurt and upset.

“Easiest way to explain it is that there was a fertilized egg, but for some reason it didn’t grow and become a fetus. So there was never a baby. It was enough to spike my hormones for a positive test. These are pretty common, Dr. Nguyen explained, and it won’t affect anything going forward, fertility-wise. I’m just fine, except I’m going to have a really bad period and some interesting moods probably for about the next week or so.”  
“There was never a baby?”  
“No. I’m sorry, Matt. I just…I wanted to tell you. I don’t want to keep anything from you. I didn’t want to hurt you, I know how much you want kids, but-“

“No, Sylvie, I want _you_. However we have a family, whenever we have a family, that matters less than you do. Are you okay? I wish I’d been there, that had to be hard news.”  
“Yes and no.” Sylvie admitted. “The timing wasn’t good. I don’t want to be a pregnant bride, Matt. I want to start a family with you, and that had me excited, but I’m sorry, baby, I didn’t want to call my mother and tell her I got pregnant, technically before we even got engaged. I don’t want there to be any doubt about why we got married or…or anything.”  
“You were crying. I mean, when I showed you the pictures of the house. Something upset you.”  
“Well, I’m pretty hormonal for one thing. I might cry just because the home you’re building for us is beautiful, or because _you’re_ beautiful-“  
“I am not.”  
“I think you are.” Sylvie argued, a little sharply. “So just let me revel in having a beautiful man, okay?”  
“Whatever you say, dear.”

“Don’t start that shit with me, Matt Casey.”  
“Yes ma’am?”

“Better.” She kissed him swiftly. “I like you obedient, not sarcastic.”  
“So, are you okay? I mean, physically and emotionally, all of it?” Matt asked gently.

“I’m okay, Matt. I promise. Are you?”  
“I’m disappointed.” He admitted after a moment. “I’m a little disappointed you didn’t tell me about the positive test. I want to be there for every moment, Sylvie. I don’t just mean about kids, though of course that, but for you. I mean, not for literally every single thing you do, I don’t want to be the kind of husband who is overbearing and has to know everything all the time, but for big stuff, big appointments, I want to be there. Check-ups, okay, that’s fine, take care of yourself. I trust you to tell me what I need to know. But the next time you have a positive test, I want to be there. Even just for a confirmation. Okay?”  
“Okay.” She agreed immediately, because it was perfectly reasonable. She also added, “but I want to know every specialist _you_ have, and anything about your head injury, Matt. No, don’t,” she cut off an objection she could see forming, “that’s not just a regular check-up. Your annual physicals for the CFD, that stuff, I trust you to tell me what I need to know, too. But a neurologist, Matt – that scares me so much. If I’d known about it, how bad it really was, I would have been so much _more_ scared back in November when you had that head injury-“  
“That’s why I didn’t-“  
“You don’t like it when I leave stuff out not to hurt or scare you, right? So don’t do it to me. It’s my job to worry about you now, Matt. I know you’re not used to that. I want you to try to let me in. Tell me when things come up, okay? I promise I’ll try not to freak out over every headache, but no more surprises about the fact that you have a regular neurologist, or what she tells you.”  
“Ah, full disclosure: the, uh, migraines I sometimes get?” Matt winced a little, but met her eyes. “Those are an after-effect of the head injury. Never had ‘em before. We’re just ‘keeping an eye on the regularity’ for now. You never asked!” He pointed out, holding up his hands, when she felt like swatting his shoulder for not telling her before.

“True. But don’t wait for me to ask.” She had to admit that. She’d just assumed Matt’s periodic migraines were normal for him, Gabby had never seemed concerned about Matt’s headaches, not while Sylvie’d known her at least. “So, what I really wanted to talk about tonight, Matt, was something else I realized this afternoon after my appointment. Besides that I didn’t want to be a pregnant bride. Something I want to talk to you about. I want to start our family, soon.”  
“You mean…” He looked pretty interested, like she was offering right now.  
“Not right _now_ , Matt. God.” She laughed, shaking her head. “But I want to talk timing and our plan for it. I’m thirty, I have to think about things like how many kids we think we want. And so, I don’t know, do you have a number in mind?”  
“Of kids?”  
“No, of gold fish. _Matt_. Yes, kids. How do you look so baffled by this?”  
“I just never… I mean, I never thought about a number.” Matt shrugged, looking genuinely confused. “I don’t think, that’s not really my call is it? I’m not the one pregnant. It’s not my body or me giving birth. I always figured my wife would tell me, you know?”  
“I don’t think family planning is just my decision.” Sylvie shook her head. “I can’t just not take what you want into consideration. I’m not saying it’s like ‘oh Matt tell me how many kids I’m having’ but it’s your family, too, Matt. We make decisions together.”  
“I don’t know. I don’t really want an only child. I mean, if we only have one, that’s such an amazing thing, a blessing, and a gift from you that I will treasure more than anything else on Earth, hell maybe in Heaven, too, I mean…but yeah, ideally more than one. Less than Herrmann.” Matt shrugged and chuckled. “Not helpful, huh?”  
“I always pictured three.” Sylvie admitted with a broad smile. “I don’t really want an only child, either. And Matt, I know that you will be the most amazing daddy when the time comes. You are going to put our children above everything else, above me, above you, above the job, everything. I know that. Without a shred of a doubt. It’s one of the sexiest things about you.”  
“Really?”  
“Mm-hmm. Makes me want to have your babies.”  
“Okay, you consistently find the sexiest damn things to say to me.” Matt groaned, closing his eyes and rolling his head back as if she was actually touching certain key parts of him. He was pretty easy to turn on like that, apparently. She loved it.

“So, if the goal is three, and if I want to be done by the time I’m your age – pregnancy risks go up around 40; Matt, I don’t want to wait. I want to stop my birth control and start trying after our wedding. I’m ready for this. But if you’re not, if you want to wait a little longer, we can do that.”  
“Babe.” Matt kissed her, hard and long. Finally, he let up and they both came up for air. “Sylvie, _you_ decide when you’re ready. If you’re ready after the wedding, we’ll start trying after the wedding. If you decide you want to be married a while before we start trying, that’s fine with me. When you’re ready, I’m ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was initially going to be chapter 1 of story 3, but on further review of plot points, I felt like that turned into one of those awful "gotcha" cliffhangers, so instead I added it to this story. I'm not sure how long it'll be before I start posting story 3, but at least a few days. I appreciate all the kudos, comments, reviews, and helpful little things along the way. I hope it's been an enjoyable journey for you, if not perhaps a light-hearted one at all points. 
> 
> This story was intended to be much shorter than the first, but it came in at I think nearly 60,000 words. As I've often said of myself, if brevity is the soul of wit, I am either witless or soulless, or both.
> 
> Edited to add: Someone please tell me I am not the only person who didn't know that Jesse Spencer got engaged? I just saw it tonight on (of all things) an Insta caption. I don't know why I'm happy about it, I don't actually know the man but I'm kind of "aw, Casey's - wait, Jesse - is happy, that's good." The good news is it inspired some more writing on story 3! (and so are the lovely comments on this story)


End file.
